


Curtains

by ErtheChilde



Series: The Shortest Life [7]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Avoidance, Curtain Fic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exploring the TARDIS, Friendship, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Memories, TARDIS rooms, Temper Tantrums, Time of the Month, Tinkering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-08 07:51:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3201341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErtheChilde/pseuds/ErtheChilde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not every day is an adventure - sometimes everyone needs a little downtime. When the Doctor parks the TARDIS in the Vortex to carry out some routine system repairs, Rose thinks she's in for a boring couple of days. But in her explorations of the TARDIS, she begins to see not only the beauty within the "frankly magnificent timeship" but gets a little more insight into the Doctor as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer:
> 
> This story utilizes characters, situations and premises that are copyright the BBC. No infringement on their respective copyrights is intended by the author in any way, shape or form. This fan oriented story is written solely for the author's own amusement and the entertainment of the readers. It is not for profit. Any resemblance to real organizations, institutions, products or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All fiction, plot and Original Characters with the exception of those introduced in the books and graphic novels, are the sole creation of ErtheChilde and using them without permission is considered rude, in bad-taste and will reflect seriously on your credibility as a writer. There may or may not be a curse in your future as well, so be warned. Remembered all things come in threes, good and bad. Plagiarizing is considered bad.
> 
> Warning:
> 
> Spoilers : If it existed in any form of Doctor Who canon, whether television, novelization or graphic novel, it's probably going to be mentioned in here. That includes up to and including 12th/13th/Whatever Doctor Adventures.
> 
> No Beta : I am beta-less at the mo', so any mistakes are my own. I edit as I go, though, so it shouldn't be too bad.
> 
> Canadian-Writing-British:As a Canadian, I'm not all-knowing when it comes to British idioms, sayings or slang. I write what sounds right to my ears and when it doubt, I look things up on the Internet, so I might not always get it right. If I'm way off about something, please drop me a line and I'll correct it.

**ONE**

Despite the fact that her life could be described as “anything but normal”, Rose Tyler liked to keep a few things down to routine. Her morning rituals were part of these, and though she sometimes varied the speed of how she did things, the order was always the same. 

The Doctor would no doubt say something caustic about it being very human of her, taking comfort in the familiarity of repetitive actions, but to Rose these times were the only instances where she had a bit of breathing space. Where she was just Rose Tyler, nearly-nineteen-year-old human with bedhead instead of Rose Tyler, Doctor’s Companion.

The alarm on her clock – set to Earth time despite the Doctor’s insisting there was no such thing as time on the TARDIS – would go off at 7:30, as it always had when she was at home. She’d stagger to the kitchen for her first cuppa – the Doctor had learned early on to avoid her at this point – and then stumble back to her room and into the shower. Afterwards, she’d sort her hair, pick out something to wear that wouldn’t be too hard to get out of if the Doctor said she needed to change and apply her make-up. Then it was as big a breakfast as she could manage – you never knew when your next meal would be once you landed somewhere – and heading off to the control room with a cup of tea for the Doctor.

By that point, she was usually more than ready to face whatever adventure her best mate intended to bring her on that day.

This morning, as expected, found the Doctor tinkering under the centre console. His leather jacket was thrown over the jump seat, and his jumper rolled up to his elbows. It was the red one today, her second favorite after the green.

She staunchly ignored the fact she wasn’t meant to consider anything of his a ‘favorite’.

‘What’cha doing?’ she asked, passing him his tea.

‘Just making sure the telepathic induction circuits are perfectly up to snuff,’ he told her as he took the offered beverage. ‘Don’t want to deal with another adventure like yesterday’s for a good long while. Say, a century maybe?’

‘Aw, but it all worked out in the end,’ Rose teased. ‘The Quiijoseanans were decent once we got them all sorted.’

‘You nearly had your tongue cut out,’ he pointed out.

She made a sweeping gesture, as though brushing an insect off herself. ‘Nearly being the key word, right?’

He snorted, but she saw the way his mouth tugged upward at her show of bravado. She’d been significantly less calm at the time, but he wasn’t to know that.

‘So, what are we doing today?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got my best trainers on and a set of hairpins in case you get your sonic nicked. I’m ready for anything, me.’

‘Oi, are you implying you expect to get arrested?’

‘Nope. Which is exactly when it happens,’ she pointed out with a smile.

‘I find your lack of faith in me a bit insulting,’ he grumbled. ‘And you know what I’ve told you about tea near the wiring.’

‘Oh, stop sulking like I’ve just hurt your big strong man feelings,’ Rose rolled her eyes and settled onto the jump seat. ‘I think we should go somewhere past. Been at least a week, I think – but nowhere with sand! I’m still washing it out of my hair!’

‘It’ll have to wait,’ the Doctor told her distractedly. ‘Gonna have a bit of downtime today.’ He considered his work in front of him. ‘More like the next three days, actually. That last bit of fun with the translation circuits reminded me it’s been a while since I ran a full diagnostic.’

‘Sounds dull,’ Rose pouted. ‘Are we at least landed somewhere interesting? Maybe while you’re doing that I can explore a bit.’

‘Sorry, nope. The repairs I need to do have to be done while in the Vortex. The TARDIS needs to soak up the energy there – bit like lubricant, but for time machines. Makes it easier to move the parts.’

‘So what am I supposed to do for three days if we’re not going to be anywhere?’

‘I dunno, go find something to amuse yourself – it’s not as if you’re in a dimensionally transcendent time-ship,’ the Doctor deadpanned. ‘I’m not a paid entertainer for bored teenagers.’

‘Bet you’d make a mint if you were,’ she joked.

The Doctor shot her an unimpressed glance. ‘Well, go on then. I’ve important work to do and you’re distracting me.’

‘Should I leave a trail of breadcrumbs so I don’t get lost?’ Rose teased.

‘You should be fine. Doubt the TARDIS would let you get too turned around.’ He smirked back at her. ‘Still, best keep to the path, Little Red Riding Hood. Never know what kind of big bad wolf might be lurking in the shadows.’

Rose made a face at that. ‘Yeah, that sounded just a bit too creepy-old-man.’

‘Noted,’ came the response as the Doctor ducked back down beneath the grating.

And without any other recourse, Rose found herself back in the hallway leading from the control room.

She was thoughtful at the prospect of exploring the Doctor’s ship. She was already more than familiar with the console room, for all the time she spent ensconced on the jump seat, watching the Doctor tinker or just chatting with him, and the medbay, thanks to some of the scrapes she and the Doctor got into on a regular basis.

She knew the kitchen like the back of her hand, and had stumbled upon at least fourteen different loos in her tenure on the TARDIS (other than the one in her room, which blessedly stayed put). 

The library was a familiar haunt if only because the Doctor spent so much time in there – if he wasn’t in the console room, the second likeliest place to find him was among the towering bookshelves, hunkered down in the thick easy chair in front of the fireplace with a dusty old tome. 

Sometimes before she went off to bed, and if he was in the right mood, he’d even read out loud to her from his favorites, but it was rare. Rose recognized that the library and the books were his solace – his little bit of peace and quiet when he needed an escape from his thoughts – and she didn’t like to bother him then.

Usually when she realized it was one of those times, she would find her way to the television and multimedia room and flip through the alien telly channels until her eyes began to droop.

So far, though, the wardrobe room was her favorite place on the ship.

The sheer size of the place, and the colourful sartorial selection of generations past and future made her shiver in anticipation. Rose liked fashion as much as the next girl – you didn’t get through Humanities classes without your _InTouch_ under your desk, and you didn’t work in a clothes shop if you couldn’t stand fashion.

_If we’re spending three days doing nothing, I think I’ll spend at least one looking through it_ , she decided. _I bet there’re some really vintage styles in there – and cheaper than what you’d try finding in London!_

But right now, faced with an extended period downtime after almost a month and a half of being constantly on the move with the Doctor, Rose found herself a bit unsure of what to do. 

They rarely took a breather between their adventures. Sure, she slept on the TARDIS and had an amazing room, but mostly they were on the go during the day. Often their escapades took them far enough away from the time ship that they ended up bedding down somewhere local instead of coming back to the TARDIS. 

When they did come back to the ship at the end of even a not-so-busy day, she was usually too tired to explore the place anyhow.

Just last week they’d spent over two weeks in Persia during the fifth century BC, and by the time she’d gotten back she’d been so exhausted from walking and riding and the heat that she’d slept through breakfast and almost to lunch the next day. Then, the minute she’d woken up, the Doctor had whisked her off to another planet, and the cycle started all over again.

She’d been so ready for an adventure today that she was a little put-off at the thought of missing out. She hoped there was something amazing worth seeing on the Doctor’s “frankly magnificent time ship” to make up for it.

_I mean, beyond endless corridors and a three storey wardrobe, how much more can you pack in here?_

Apparently, quite a lot, as it turned out.

· ΘΣ ·

Even long after Rose’s steps faded from the console room, the Doctor found himself scowling at the sonic.

What had possessed him to say that completely campy line? He’d meant to tease her back but it had just come off as…well, she’d said what it’d come off as, hadn’t she? 

Creepy old man.

He didn’t like that notion and resolved silently (yet firmly) to never say anything like that again. Not for the first time since meeting Rose did he wish that some of his eighth self’s more _loquacious_ qualities had been passed on to him. He used to have such a way with words, and now he was mixing metaphors – or ,rather, fairy tales.

Really, the Grimm brothers would be appalled.

Oh, there was a thought! He could take Rose to meet them, she’d love it! 

Jacob and Wilhelm always had the best stories, even if the better ones hadn’t made it into their books. Then again, you couldn’t put aliens and a time travelling Police Box in literature meant for a population that still held public executions. 

He opened his mouth to suggest it, and then remembered that he’d sent Rose off to wander. 

Really, there hadn’t been a need for it. She wasn’t really a distraction, and all things considered he more than enjoyed having her there with him while he worked, chatting and asking questions and filling up the empty console with her presence. 

For so small a person, she could certainly flood a place with positive energy. It was a fact he thrived on.

Perhaps too much. 

Barring the instances where they had been separated on their various adventures, the Doctor had spent almost every waking moment (of Rose’s, anyhow) by her side. He craved her proximity like it was a drug, because while he was around her – even when she asked questions that he didn’t want to answer – the reality of things didn’t seem so bad.

He was worried it would become more than a passing dependence, but an addiction. Rose didn’t deserve that, to be treated like some kind of wonder drug. If she ever found out, she would feel used, and from the hints she had given about her past and the rather vocal diatribe she’d subjected him to on an Amaranian prison ship once, he knew that was one of her biggest triggers.

So he’d sent her off to spend the day on her own while he attempted to sort himself out.

‘Mind she doesn’t find any of the remaining companions rooms,’ he told the TARDIS absently. There was an incredulous and somewhat disapproving response from her, but he ignored it. It was too painful for him to want to answer questions right now, and Rose was a positive demon for questions. Besides, his companions privacy should be respected, after all, even long after they had left him. And on that not – ‘Oh, and keep her out of my room.’

He rarely used it to sleep, but it was the one place where he could be well and truly alone if he desired it. Even the TARDIS made a point to retreat from his mind when he was in there.

There was an insisting beeping noise from up on the console, telling him the diagnostic on the internal ship systems had finished running, and he climbed back out of the grating to check the results. When the translation circuits shorted out due to the TARDIS encounter with Quiijoseanan technology, he had had the fault locator run a Basic Reality Check so he knew what needed to be looked at. Even after finding out the exact problem with the circuits, he’d left it running for the past three days to see if there was anything that really needed to be seen to. Usually the diagnostic listed the topmost priorities, but usually when he looked things over himself he could get a sense of what might become a problem in the future.

Right now, though, the most immediate problem was that the passivator was leaking green coolant into the aethopathic chamber. Apparently he’d hit the navigational panel hard enough at some point and in just such a way that the xion crystals were out of alignment. Probably that emergency stop in Persia.

‘Fantastic,’ he sighed. It was a messy job, fixing that, but if he didn’t the positioning system would overheat and there wouldn’t be any more travelling until they fixed it. Not good, considering Rose was already bored at the prospect of being stuck in the Vortex for three days.

To be sure, so was he, but he had a universe to watch over. She was just being a bit lazy and human, saying she was bored without even thinking it through or bothering to find something else to do – 

Oh, looked like there was also a glitch in the Time Vector Generator. 

He’d have to sort that if he didn’t want to find himself displaced forward in time while trying to land the TARDIS in a high traffic temporal nexus, such as Cardiff or Rikvetta-9. Or worse, if it displaced Rose and he couldn’t find her again. 

And there it was, once more it all came back to Rose.

He grunted in annoyance, forcing his thoughts back onto more practical matters and set about fixing the things he needed to. He spent the next hour struggling not to keep thinking about the human girl or wondering what she might have found to amused herself, and then chiding himself about it.

Honestly, he was a Time Lord, he was above getting fixated on a specific subject or thought!

Finally, a welcome (or not so welcome, in some ways) distraction appeared when he accidentally knocked the Helmic Regulator while toggling the transmission gears and knocked them thousands of years off course in a matter of seconds. He had to hurry to stop it before the TARDIS ended up too far away, like the year 100 trilllion or something ridiculous like that.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AN: After writing a few chapters of this story, I decided that Chapter One was way too long, so I decided to split it into two. Sorry if it looked like this was an update! It sort of is, as there’s more in the end than there was.

**_Curtains_ **

**_by ErtheChilde_ **

_‘I’m not a miracle worker.’_

 

She spent the first fifteen minutes wandering down a hexagonal hallway, opening and closing what seemed to be an endless supply of guest rooms.

 _Who for, though,_ she wondered. There was no one on the TARDIS but her and the Doctor. Maybe at one point more people had lived here as well? People who had been lost in the War? Maybe his crew, or perhaps –

 _Oh!_ She came to a halt when she realized. _What if his family lived on here with him? Parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles…? It’s definitely big enough in here…_

The idea of going through rooms that may have once housed the Doctor’s dead people creeped her out a bit, and so she stopped investigating the doors until she came to what seemed to be a dead end.

‘Not get lost my arse,’ she pouted, turning to go back the way she came only to find herself in a wide, open hallways that looked like something from an M.C. Escher painting she had seen once at the Tate Modern.

It was like a dozen different hallways and stairwells had been connected to each other, and not in any logical fashion either. Ceilings grew out of floors and stairs led to nowhere, while others simply circled round into an endless spiral. Hardwood flooring grew into carpet drew into cobblestones, and while paintings of familiar Earth scenes hung side by side with floating alien sculptures.

Daunted by the confusion tangle of stairs and doorways, Rose quickly slipped through the nearest archway that looked a little less overwhelming than the others and followed it out of the odd stairwell and onto…

Blimey!

‘How the hell d’you get a cricket pitch in here?’ Rose asked, amazement and admiration colouring her tone as she looked around the vast green space that stretched out around her.

She had expected to walk into another loo or maybe a boiler room of some sort. This was beyond her expectations.

Some sort of artificial light streamed down from above, like a sun but not, and the sound of birds chirping in the distance momentarily made her forget that she wasn’t actually outside anywhere but still in the depths of the TARDIS.

‘Okay, well, that’s a bit cool, even if it’s not exactly my thing,’ she admitted as she wandered across the grassy surface.

The wicket itself was interesting, but not really her thing. She wasn’t a huge fan of watching sports – what was the point of watching when you could be doing? – and even if she had been, cricket wouldn’t have been her game of choice.

There was an inexplicable matte glass door at the end of the field, which she almost didn’t see until she walked straight into it. After recovering her misstep and examining it to see that it didn’t seem to lead anywhere, she opened it up and found herself wandering through a veritable labyrinth full of croquet courts – which, again, she was amazed by, but it wasn’t really her thing.

At the edge of the last court, an ivy trellis door led her into a domed corridor of leaves and branches. She followed it for several minutes, ducking low hanging twigs and vines, before the passage became larger and finally opened out onto an enormous, sprawling garden.

The same kind of artificial sun was radiating overhead, bathing the flowers and shrubs with light and heat, while a warm breeze whispered past her.

‘S’amazing,’ she gaped, turning around several times to see how far the place stretched. The door she had come through had gone, but she wasn’t too worried about it. If she wanted to leave, she somehow knew the TARDIS would provide her with a way to do so –

In the same way she appeared to have left a bottle of sunscreen and a stack of alien gossip magazines in a nicely shaded part of the garden.

‘That the plan for the day?’ Rose asked, though as expected there was no response. ‘Can’t complain about that!’

· ΘΣ ·

It was as if he was destined to finish fixing one thing, and then to have another thing break!

While finishing up the issue with the coolant, he’d accidentally entered the wrong control command in the guidance systems and deactivated the Vortex Shields – which had refused to turn back on first when he attempted the do it through the computer, and then because the manual trigger-mechanism under the button that reengaged them had stopped working. He’d ended up scrambling through the empty hallways to scavenge spare parts from whatever closet he happened upon, only to discover upon returning that the entire system was operating on auxiliary power.

After sorting that bit of trouble, he’d fixed a loose connection that would’ve caused a miscommunication between the central processing units of the TARDIS computers and the drive systems – only to realize that there was also a loose section of piping mucking those up as well.

He kept one eye on the mean-free path tracker to ensure their path back through the Vortex remained clear. If the TARDIS knocked into any debris or hit turbulence, it could throw off his work and possibly kill them all.

Another thing he wouldn’t be telling Rose.

After that, he headed down to fix the flux comparator in the Eye of Harmony, doing a quick gage of the energy flow. Eventually he’d need to top it up, and being unable to go back to Gallifrey, there were considerably fewer places in the universe he could go to in order to do that.

He was surprised to see the levels were still relatively stable, and then remembered that they were in Cardiff not a month and a half before. He did the mental calculations, and nodded in thoughtfully. The TARDIS would be alright for another year little bit – roughly a human year, to borrow Rose’s terms – which was a shorter period than he’d like, but better than he expected.

Oh, well, if he had to land in Cardiff again, he’d try to get the TARDIS to find somewhere a little more fun than the nineteenth century. Maybe before Cardiff was Cardiff – the Rift existed at a fixed spatial-temporal location, after all, but the continents moved around it and living organisms evolved around it.

Maybe they could visit Pangea in the Triassic – or Laurasia in the Cretaceous! He bet she’d like to see some of the more recognizable prehistoric species there, and he could show her just how wrong the films always got it. Or they could go snowshoeing across the glaciers in the Miocene, that’d be fun…

He realized he was doing it again and if he could glare at himself with stuffy Time Lord disapproval, he would be.

· ΘΣ ·

Rose wasn’t sure how long she spent lying in that field of pink and yellow flowers, soaking up the sun with her trainers cast off, but it felt like hours. Once she grew tired of reading about the celebrity feud between two famous Groske and Graske families, she lay back with an arm flung over her eyes and dozed. Grass tickled her ears and the backs of her ankles, and birdsong echoed across the meadow, lulling her to sleep.

She only woke when it became too hot for her in the sun, the beginnings of a sunburn flaring across her bared skin. She went looking for the exit and instead found a panelled glass door like something out of a greenhouse. Upon going through it, however, she found herself standing in front of a huge swimming pool.

‘Guess you really are a mind reader,’ she told the TARDIS. Just when she was contemplating taking a dip in just her underthings, she happened to look to one side and find a swimsuit and towel already laid out for her. The suit was yellow and frilly like something out of the nineteen fifties, but Rose was charmed by it and quickly pulled it on.

She did a few experimental lengths of the pool, idly thinking maybe she should put that into her routine – _never know, we could end up on some planet where there’s only water and swimming’s the only way to get around! –_ and then hopped out to explore some more. There was a wood-panelled sauna nearby, and after she finished up in there she found a different bundle of clothes from her room waiting for her.

Upon leaving the pool by one door, she ended up walking into thin air before the world righted itself around her and she found herself in an armoury containing thousands of types of armour from different time periods – and probably different planets as well.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a flurry of unbelievable chambers – a mad scientist’s laboratory, a botanical house with hundreds of alien looking plants, a garage where someone had parked a Vespa and an old Volkswagon, and for some reason a room filled entirely with LEGO.

‘I knew it,’ she said, shaking her head with a fond smile on her face. ‘He really is just a big kid.’

The next door gave her a bit of pause.

It turned out there actually was a laundromat on the TARDIS. Why hadn’t he said anything when she’d asked? For that matter, why hadn’t the TARDIS shown her to it? Whenever she thought of anything she needed, the TARDIS tended to bring her right to it – or vice versa.

‘Unless you knew how important it was for me to visit my mum,’ Rose suggested tentatively, still unsure of how exactly one communicated with a sentient time ship. And the fact the Doctor had just gone along with it was a sign that maybe he had recognized Rose’s needs too.

‘Daft man,’ she murmured fondly as she closed the door behind her.

Around noonish – or what she expected to be noonish, considering she didn’t exactly have a watch on her and it could have been later – she started to get a bit peckish and found herself in a fully stocked Italian bistro, where the food had already been laid out.

‘If I didn’t know you were a sentient time-space ship, I’d be looking for House Elves,’ she remarked as she bit into some rather amazing garlic bread _au gratin_. There was no response from the ship that she could hear. ‘Well, however you do it – you’re a brilliant cook. Which is a good thing, cos I’m rubbish and I highly doubt the Doctor ever takes the time to eat more than those horrible bars from the food machine.’

She shuddered. She wasn’t really one for gourmet cooking, especially having grown up on Jackie Tyler’s attempts and then leftovers, but she knew enough to find anything made by the machine dull and tasteless.

The Doctor might be all for efficiency, but with his so-called superior senses, he should know better!

Licking the garlic off her fingers, she wondered if she should bring him anything to eat from here.

 _Probably make a fuss about me distracting him_ , she thought, feeling a little down at the thought. _Or bringing food near the console._

She weighed her options, knowing he could go days without eating, but deciding to bring him a bit of food anyhow.

 _Hang his complaining_ , she decided. It would give her a chance to say thanks about him taking her home “to do laundry” without getting a gruff brush-off about it.

· ΘΣ ·

The Doctor soldered the last loose connection along the circuit board and then scanned the finished work. The sonic whirred a moment, searching, and then indicated that the time shields were fully re-instated.

Nodding in satisfaction, the Doctor headed back to console room to check the diagnostic readout once more and hope that this time he hadn’t managed to add to his problems instead of reducing them. That sometimes happened when he was in the middle of repairs.

Absently, he studied the navigation system and wondered whether he should take a look at the time element today or put it off until the next time Rose was asleep. Or visiting her mother. There wasn’t any hurry, really, but then again, he was travelling with a jeopardy friendly human…

_Never know when you need an emergency microjump…_

So he set about disconnecting the time element and replacing the wires before putting it back.

_There. Ready for all Rose Tyler related emergencies._

There was a bit of a build-up of artron energy circulating the ship, and so he brought them back out of the Vortex in order to bleed a bit of it off into space. Ensuring that the atmospheric shields and gravity containment were properly operational, he flung open the front door –

And froze.

He hadn’t been paying attention to where the TARDIS had slipped out of the Vortex, but he knew it without having to go back and make sure.

In the distance, the familiar constellation seemed somewhat diminished, not least of all because there were several planets missing. The seventeen suns still burned on, their light reflecting across planets and moons that had survived the war. The two that had shone down on him as a boy seemed smaller, though.

Nothing but dust and debris remained, and he knew if he brought the TARDIS closer, he would come up on the floating corpses of dead Daleks and war TARDISes.

The very idea sickened him.

‘You have _got_ to tell me why there’s an Italian bistro on your ship,’ Rose declared from somewhere behind him, not noticing his current emotional state. She brought with her the smell of food - cacciatore by the smell of it. ‘And for that matter, why d’you have a room full of…Doctor?’

Oh. Well, maybe she had noticed. Perceptive little ape.

His hand tightened on the door, which he had been preparing to slam.

He swallowed down the lump in his throat, wrestling with whether to brush it all off as nothing and lie or to tell her the truth.

No, he couldn’t do that. It was too much.

He turned and shot her an insubstantial smile, and nodded at the blackness beyond the door. ‘You forget, sometimes. How big it is. Seeing it makes even someone like me feel a bit small.’

She looked like she didn’t believe him, but didn’t call him on it. Instead, put the platter of whatever she was carrying on the jumpseat and strode forward.

‘Know what the cure to that is?’

He shot her an indulgent, slightly patronizing look. ‘Tell me.’

She took his hand and turned her attention to the vast inky darkness of the galaxy. ‘Don’t look at it alone.’

He couldn’t think of a word to say after that.

 


	3. Chapter Three

**_Curtains_ **

**_by ErtheChilde_ **

_‘I’m not a miracle worker.’_

 

The next morning, Rose idled in bed much longer than usual and didn’t bother with her usual morning routine. She simply threw her hair into a ponytail, shrugged on some comfy clothing and completely ignored her make-up kit. Once she’d had her first cuppa, she ate a quick breakfast and brought the Doctor something to eat as well – beans on toast, just to be clever.

‘Really?’ he questioned, giving the dish a disdainful look though he didn’t natter on about food near the console this time.

‘Keeps you humble,’ she teased.

‘I’m already humble,’ he complained. ‘See how humble I am? Worked through the night and didn’t come bother you while you were sleeping your life away.’

Rose frowned. ‘You’ve been doing that a lot. Not sleeping. I’ve never seen you at it.’

‘Don’t need sleep. What’d you end up doing last night?’

‘Everyone needs sleep. I called my mum for a chat.’

‘Best be careful with that. Call her too often and the timelines will be all synced up,’ he cautioned. ‘Told you, I only need about an hour a day.’

‘What’s the problem with the timelines syncing up?’ she wanted to know. ‘That’s still needing sleep. And I bet you haven’t taken even that in weeks.’

He glowered at her with a full mouth, swallowed and explained, ‘Two problems, actually: one, your mum’s already after us to bring you by every week. Which wouldn’t be a problem normally cos we can space out visits to her in our timeline by as much as we want as long as we’re not synced to her and not mess with her relative timeline. The more synced we are, the harder it’ll be to land.’

‘Cos the TARDIS has trouble landing close to herself,’ Rose remembered.

‘Well, that and I don’t fancy seeing your mother more than I have to. Takes a lot of effort to get the right landing.’

‘Which has absolutely nothing to do with your driving,’ Rose rolled her eyes. ‘Okay, what’s the other problem?’

He hesitated a minute, and then shot her an uncomfortable look. ‘Got a year to make up for, right? Can’t get all that travelling in that you’re supposed to have done in a year if we’re back at your mother’s every other day.’

Rose felt something in her stomach swoop at the revelation of what the Doctor was trying to do for her.

As if he could sense her realization, he busied himself with something on the control panel. She decided to let him have that one.

‘So, Mister-Sleep-Is-For-The-Weak,’ Rose asked. ‘Since you worked so long, how much longer ‘til we can get going?’

‘Another day or so,’ the Doctor answered.

‘Might as well leave you to it, then,’ Rose said. ‘Got more of the ship to explore, don’t I?’

‘That you do.’

‘Don’t work too hard,’ she told him with a grin, and as she was leaving the room, called out, ‘And have a kip, yeah?’

Vast time ship to explore or not, her heart wasn’t as in to it as she had been the day before. As brilliant as everything she found was, the reality of exploring the ship alone kept hitting her. It’d be more fun if the Doctor were around to explain the story behind some of the things she found.

Granted, she didn’t need to know why she’d stumbled upon a scullery room or a workshop filled with carpentry tools, or even the smaller library that looked to be stocked with nothing but first editions. But she was sure the story behind the small garden tool shed filled with creepy little pottery garden gnomes might be amusing.

Or the closet packed to the brim with sea shells of so many vibrant colours and shapes that she couldn’t just be from earth.

Or the room stuffed with scarves.

Or the chamber filled with terracotta Chinese statues like she’d seen at the British Museum.

Or the loo with a claw footed tub the size of an Olympic pool.

‘Guess I can’t tease him about being cheap anymore,’ Rose mused as she opened one door and found a storeroom filled with diamonds. She gaped around at the glittering gemstones spilling from countless sacks. ‘Cor, what’d he do, rob a bank?’ She paused to consider that, and shook her head. ‘Nah.’

She closed the door, resolving to never ask about it and also to never tell her mother what she’d found on the Doctor’s ship.

‘Mum would have it off him faster than you could say Raxa…Raxic…Raxacopu…’

She spent the next hour of her wandering trying to get it right.

· ΘΣ ·

The Doctor swore as a great glob of grease hit him in the face, but continued generously lubricating the engine release lever. It certainly wasn’t his favorite job, but it had to be done.

Once finished, he wiped his the wet trail on his face on the sleeve of his jumper and moved on to fixing the fast return switch as well. He’d noticed it sticking the other day, and wouldn’t that be embarrassing if it wasn’t operational when he needed it to be.

‘You missed a spot,’ Rose’s voice said from the hallway, and he glanced up to see her grinning at him and tapping her nose.

He wiped the rest of the mess of his face, and glanced back at her. She nodded in confirmation that he’d gotten all of it.

‘Bored already?’ he asked her.

‘A bit,’ she answered. ‘Figured I’d come see how you’re doing.’

‘I’m sure there’s better things for you to do while I fix the ship,’ he smirked. ‘Especially considering you’ve got no idea what I’m doing?’

‘Bet you only know what you’re doing half the time anyway,’ she retuned cheekily, settling herself on the jump seat.

He tipped his head in acknowledgment of that. ‘Question remains the same.’

‘I dunno,’ she shrugged. ‘Guess I just miss you is all.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m right here.’

‘Yeah, I know, but…well, I figured if we’re on the same ship I’d be seeing more of you,’ she explained, not really looking at him. ‘We’ve been going so fast since we met and wherever we go somewhere we always end up separated –’

‘Cos you wander off.’

‘You’re one to talk!’ she shot back, and they beamed at each other before she went on, ‘Anyhow, it’s just nice is all. Every now and then, just to sit and talk? Maybe we can watch a film or play a board game or something.’

Alarm-bells went off in the Doctor’s head, and he automatically returned, ‘It’s a bit domestic, isn’t it?’

Rose looked at him with a bit of fond exasperation. ‘You know, sometimes domestic doesn’t _mean_ domestic.’

‘Yeah, thanks for clearing that up…’

‘No, I mean – sometimes, it just means doing low-key stuff,’ Rose ameliorated. ‘Even you need a break sometimes, don’t you?’

‘I take plenty of breaks. Not travelling all the time, am I? This bit of loitering in the Vortex? That’s me taking a break.’

‘No, it’s you making sure the TARDIS doesn’t break down when we’re in the middle of something important,’ she pointed out reasonably. ‘And besides, you need a break from that too sometimes.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘The swearing and squirting yourself in the face with black goop?’ she suggested.

He shot her a look. ‘I don’t swear.’

‘You so do. Just because I can’t understand you when you do it doesn’t mean I don’t understand the tone,’ she insisted. ‘Mickey was always the same way. When he was working on his car and accidentally pinched his fingers?’

The comparison irked him, setting off another, louder sounding set of alarm bells.

‘M’nothing like you’re useless lump of a boyfriend,’ he told her, scowling as he went back to work.

‘Oi! Not so useless, him! He helped save the world, remember?’

‘Course I remember. If he starts doing it on a daily basis, then I’ll be impressed.’

Rose let out an annoyed exhalation of air.

‘Yeah, this bit? This bit I didn’t miss,’ she told him and backed away from the TARDIS. ‘I’ll be back later, when you’re not having a go at people I care about.’

The Doctor exhaled as she left.

There were some times that Rose was every bit as human as they came, ascribing meanings and significance to things that meant a certain thing to her but which could never mean the same to him. It was a failing of all of his companions at some point, and it was best to nip it in the bud while he could before it became something…else.

What “else” was in Rose’s case, he refused to think about, and though he felt a bit bad at inadvertently insulting her, he could deal with that later.

Maybe he’d find her later, after he finished this round of repairs, and offer her a guided tour of the parts of the TARDIS she hadn’t seen yet…

· ΘΣ ·

Rose frowned at the aerosol can labeled “Nitro-9” before putting it back down on the bench of the drawing room she had entered. Knowing the Doctor, whatever was in it would cause some kind of explosion and she didn’t fancy finding out what happened when something blew up inside the TARDIS while they were in flight.

Or not in flight.

Or possibly ever.

Her hands passed over a series of other puzzling objects – a pack of everlasting matches, a bag of jelly babies past their sell-by date, an umbrella with a question-mark shaped handle, a recorder, a white cube which looked like it opened but which she couldn’t decipher, a stick of celery – and halted on a leather book labelled _Five Hundred Year Diary_.

Excited at the notion of learning more about the Doctor and a bit amused at the idea of the Doctor keeping a diary, she frowned upon discovering it was all written in an intelligible somewhat linear version of the Doctor’s script.

‘S’ppose it makes sense, I guess,’ she sighed, putting it back in its place and examining a blue signet ring. ‘I’d write it in my first language too.’

It was probably for the best that it was, she decided as she moved on to yet another door. Who knew what kind of personal things the Doctor had put in there? She had no right to read any of that. She’d rather he tell her about it, one day when thinking about the past wasn’t so painful.

‘Though…waiting for that’s gonna be hard,’ she decided as she looked around the latest room.

There were eight clothes stands on display, all of them dressed in the oddest assortment of clothes she’d ever seen. She walked past, trying to come up with a reason for why they’d been put in here – or why anyone would wear a frock coat and tartan trousers together. Or a frilled shirt and cape. Or the colourful monstrosity of red and yellow that looked like it belonged at a three-ring circus.

She couldn’t resist taking down the wide brimmed hat and long, colorful scarf to try on. She giggled as her feet got tangled up in it.

She wondered at first if they belonged to other people, other Time Lords, who had lived on the TARDIS before. Maybe all of his people were the type to only wear one thing, and these belonged to them? Maybe he was keeping them here as some sort of homage?

That in mind, she quickly replaced the hat and scarf.

As she moved on to study the display with the panama hat and vest, and then the waist coat and cravat she paused.

Hadn’t the Doctor once said he’d worn cravats?

Realization over what she had found hit her, and she laughed out loud.

‘He used to wear all this!’ she exclaimed in delight. ‘S’ppose that explains the cricket gear, then – but never that stovepipe hat!’

Oh, she was going to tease him forever on this one! Half of the stuff in here couldn’t have fit him properly. Though, she supposed he might have worn some of these in his youth when he was shorter.

Oh, he must have looked absolutely ridiculous, with those ears and that get-up!

Nothing looked anything like what he wore now, and she supposed that was the Time War reflecting in his choice of clothing. Hard and utilitarian, nothing quite so bright and fanciful as these duds.

The idea made her think that perhaps she was invading his privacy in some way, seeing this glimpse of who he had been before he met her, and she decided to leave the secret little wardrobe robe.

Dressing up in the Doctor’s old outfit though had rekindled her interest in exploring the larger wardrobe, and so she headed there to see what she could find.

She amused herself for a while just looking, but then had the brilliant idea to put something on and then go find the Doctor to tell her where it belonged. Maybe he’d even suggest where they go next based on her outfit!

‘Be nice for once to be dressed right for the time,’ she remarked to no one in particular

She went through a few different costume changes – a breastplate and chainmail, a skin-tight-diving suit and a golden-yellow dress that looked a bit like that famous picture of Elizabeth the First before she found something.

She was in the middle of trying to undo the bodice of the dress when she noticed a bit of red sticking out from behind a bunch of crocks and coats with shoulder pads.

‘That mean this is unwanted too?’ she wondered, pulling out a gorgeous long red cloak and a strangely shaped golden…hat? Helmut? Neckbrace?

She held it away from herself, noting how it flared out around the shoulders and then again over the headpiece, a bit like an hour glass.

Curious, she draped the red cloak over herself, fitting it over the golden dress as best she could – it was a bit big, probably made for a man – and then maneuvering the odd golden _whatever_ onto her head.

It was actually quite heavy, and for a moment her balance wavered.

Catching a glance of herself in the mirror, she began to laugh at the picture she presented. The outfit looked so pretentious!

She whirled around in the mirror, sweeping the robes around as pretentiously as she could, muttering , ‘ _We are not amu-u-sed’_   in increasingly more nobbish ways.

Something moved in the reflection of the mirror, and she noticed for the first time that the Doctor was in the wardrobe room with her, standing completely still.

She turned with a smile, opening her mouth to greet him, but the smile died on her lips at his expression.

His face was bone-white and his hands clenched into tight fists. But the worst were his eyes – blazing at her in such a way as she’d only ever seen directed at people like Cassandra.

‘Take them off,’ he ordered in a measured, chillingly clear voice.

She didn’t even think to question him, ripping the robe and the headdress from her body. She’d barely managed that when he leapt forward, snatching the clothing from her and stalking from the wardrobe room without another word.


	4. Chapter Four

**_Curtains_ **

**_by ErtheChilde_ **

_‘I’m not a miracle worker.’_

The Doctor marched away with the robes clenched in his hands, not even paying attention to where he was going. His chest heaved as he tried to get himself under control, the cold rage that had so quickly washed over him still simmering in his blood.

It was as if the faster he moved, the better he was able to escape it.

Slowly he became aware of the TARDIS directing a long, angry diatribe at him for treating Rose as he had with no explanation. As the angry fog began to dissipate, he became more certain he didn’t want to hear it.

The door of his room appeared around the next corner and he wasted no time locking himself into it, relishing for one rare moment the total silence that meant the TARDIS wasn’t in his head.

She might be angry with him, but she would respect his space unless the universe was in danger.

He stared down at the silken robes in his hands, trying to figure out how they could have made him snap so badly. Become upset, yes, but to reach the point where even a few words had felt like an effort?

And Rose…

His thoughts stuttered a bit at the memory of how she’d looked in them.

She hadn’t been wearing them properly, of course, but her frame in the Elizabethan dress and the colours with her complexion…she had looked beautiful.

No, breath-taking.

A hundred times more stunning than he had told her when he saw her dressed for Naples-but-really-Cardiff. She might well have been dressed for mourning compared to the scarlet and gold of his Chapter. She’d looked so very much like –

No.

He had no intention of thinking of people long dead, of friends and family whose deaths he was responsible for. If he did, he would begin to think of the inevitable moment when he lead Rose to her death or damaged her in some way.

An irrational thought – the same, recurring one about bringing her home that he thought about a hundred times each day but ignored – made its presence known once more. Just as often, he came up with every other thing he would rather do than bring her home and lose her for good.

He shook his head and folded the robes and headdress away, relegating them to the farthest part of his closet as he could and making a not to remind the TARDIS not to bring them out again.

He was too cowardly and selfish to bring Rose home. But if she decided one day that he was too much trouble to be around…if she decided to leave…

Well, she’d tell him.

Until then, he had repairs to see to.

He needed to get them out of the Vortex. For a massive time ship where a body could easily get lost, living in such close quarters was beginning to get more personal than he was ready to deal with.

Rose might know him better than anyone anymore, but he wasn’t ready for her to know everything.

·ΘΣ·

When the Doctor left, he took all of Rose’s previous enthusiasm for trying on costumes with him.

Feeling rather like all of the air had just been sucked out of the room, Rose slowly got back into her jeans and shuffled out of the wardrobe.

She wasn’t exactly sure just what she had done, but it was clearly something to do with the robe. It must have had something to do with his past, because he only ever go that upset – and to that extent – when there was something to do with the Time War.

Had it belonged to someone he cared about and had lost? She would never have guessed it from the way it had been thrown among the rather rubbish clothing.

 _Maybe that’s exactly why_ , she thought, and was immediately overwhelmed with the need to apologize. She hadn’t known, but that didn’t stop it from having hurt him.

She trailed down the hallways, poking her head through doors that led to his usual haunts in an effort to locate him. The console room was empty – apparently he hadn’t decided to go back to his repairs – as was the library, the kitchen and the multimedia room.

Eventually she clued into the pointlessness of searching an endlessly large ship for one man, and hesitantly spoke to the ceiling, ‘Can you help me find him? I just want to say I’m sorry.’

And just as quickly she found herself standing in front of a plain, unassuming looking door that she instinctively knew would lead her to the Doctor’s bedroom.

She’d always wondered where it was, but had never asked. It didn’t seem appropriate for some reason, and besides, the Doctor usually seemed to find her if she needed him. Maybe that TARDIS let him know.

She raised her hand to knock on the aged looking wood, intending to coax him out, when she paused.

She knew what she was like after a row with a friend, even an unintentional one. She never liked to talk or be annoyed by them afterward, and it had always bothered her how when she and her mother or her and Shareen would row, and then the other would be hovering over her or outside her room. It made her feel forced to forgive them for whatever they did, and in some cases she’d never get over it.

She didn’t really want the Doctor to forgive her because he felt obligated or because he was trying to get her to leave him alone. She wanted him to actually understand how sorry she was about the whole thing and be in the right frame of mind where he could tell her what she had done wrong. That way she’d know what not to do again. 

Slowly, she let her hand rest back by her side and backed away from the door.

‘Thanks,’ she said to the TARDIS, ‘but in his own time, yeah?’

Either way, she was glad that she now knew where the Doctor resided in case of an emergency. Exactly what kind of emergency would require her knowing where his bedroom is, she didn’t know, but was glad all the same.

She ended up eating supper all alone, because even hours later the Doctor didn’t make an appearance. Despite her resolution to let him come to her in his own time, she felt a bit dejected as she cleaned up the remains of her dinner.

Had what she’d done really upset him _that_ much?

Maybe the robe really _had_ belonged to someone important to him, like a wife or something.

She paused on her way back to her bedroom, realizing she had never asked if he’d been married or had a family. Abstractly she had thought he might have, but she never asked.

‘God, what if he had kids once,’ she realized out loud, and then promised herself never to bring up the question. That was definitely one that he would have to bring up himself.

She’d done enough today to hurt him, and could only hope that the next day would be better.

·ΘΣ·

He’d spent an hour in his room forcing himself under control before returning to the console room, where he’d decided to make yet another ultimately futile attempt to fix the chameleon circuit.

It was a task he only ever busied himself with when his mind was too preoccupied to be let near any of the TARDIS’s more vital controls. Or when he felt like wasting time.

He wasn’t completely sure which one it was at this point, but judging from the way the TARDIS was alternating between humming indignantly and shocking him, she obviously thought it was both.

The whole situation was absolutely laughable. If his people could see him now, an emotional wreck because one girl – the primary example of a species they considered barely past the troglodyte state of evolution – had seen something he hadn’t wanted her to see?

Madness.

Rose probably didn’t even know what she’d done to upset him in the first place. After all, he’d told her to go exploring. But how was he to have known she was going to find the blasted robes? He’d completely forgotten they were even in there, it had been so long since he’d had to wear them. Otherwise he’d have told the TARDIS to hide them.

He continued to pick apart his reaction, trying to find the logic behind his reaction so that he could combat it the next time he felt it surge to the surface.

Only a few weeks since his regeneration and he was already growing weary of this temper of his. Once upon a time he could hide his anger, let it simmer beneath a veneer of composure and use the rest of his energy to bend circumstances to his will. Now, though, he felt like a lit fuse.

What was Rose even doing with him?

Considering the things he’d gleaned about her past, and that one relationship that had been at least verbally abusive, if not physical…

Was being around him really the best thing for her? Never mind the danger of his every day life, but his mental problems alone might put her in danger.

She had been lucky enough to grow up normal – despite her mother – and now she was shacking up with him, with his hot-and-cold moods and inexplicable rages? They exhausted him and he lived them on an hourly basis – she must think he was some sort of mental case.

He had to clear the air with her.

Mind made up, he put down the tools and headed out of the console room – he thought he heard the TARDIS let out chime of exasperated relief, but he could have imagined it – to explain things to her.

Possibly he might apologize, but he hadn’t quite decided yet. The concept of a Time Lord apologizing to a human was still a foreign enough concept to him that he had to think it through.

Rose’s door appeared several yards ahead of him, and without thought he turned the handle and headed right in.

·ΘΣ·

‘Rose?’

She let out a wordless shriek as the door to her room was suddenly thrown open without warning, causing her to knock over the pile of magazines she’d been reading on her bed.

‘What the hell?’ she yelped, immediately very conscious of the fact she was lounging on her bed in nothing but her knickers and a tank-top.

In the doorway, the Doctor let out a shocked curse and jumped back, but didn’t leave.

‘Never heard of knocking?’ she demanded, stumbling to her feet and grabbing for the terrycloth dressing gown the TARDIS had provided with her.

The Doctor didn’t answer, and when she looked up she saw that he was very pointedly not looking at her body. In fact, his gaze was riveted on her face with a hint of distaste, like she’d just climbed out of a Slitheen’s skin suit.

‘What the hell’ve you got on your face?’ he demanded.

‘Anti-acne treatment!’ she snapped. ‘What the hell are you doing, barging in without bothering to knock?’

‘It’s my ship, why would I knock?’

‘I dunno, maybe cos I might be getting changed in here and not have any clothes on?’ she snapped, grabbing a pair of her pajamas and heading into the ensuite.

‘Or be painting yourself up like a Ramurran cannibal?’

‘Whatever that means – if you’d’ve _knocked_ I wouldn’t’ve scared you.’

‘Oi! Who said I was scared? Faced down entire civilizations more terrifying than you look with that muck all over you,’ he boasted. ‘Just…wasn’t expecting that.’

Rose’s annoyance over the fact that he didn’t knock briefly distracted her from her surprise that he had come to find her at all. She wondered for a second if he had come to tell her she had to leave the TARDIS, but then decided he wouldn’t be so distracted by her face mask if that was it.

She came out of the bathroom, now clad in pajamas but with the face mask still on. He’d just have to deal with it. ‘What’d you want?’

‘You know, there are more effective treatments than whatever slop you’ve got on. Probably cheaper, too.’

‘Doctor, either get to the point, or get out,’ she told him crossly. ‘I need to finish getting ready for dead. Inferior human physiology, remember?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he blurted out. He paused to consider that, then added. ‘Not for the other thing, but in the wardrobe. Those robes…’

‘It’s to do with your people, yeah?’ she interrupted quietly. ‘It’s alright, Doctor, you don’t need to explain, I sort of figured it out.’

He cast her a look like admiration, and then shook his head. ‘Doesn’t matter, I shouldn’t’ve…reacted that way. Those robes, they were for ceremonial purposes. I never expected to see them again, let alone have someone wearing them.’

Rose knew what it had cost him to tell her this – to show her the vulnerable part of him.

‘I’m the one who’s sorry,’ she told him. ‘I didn’t know.’

He scoffed. ‘And how were you supposed to know? I but the in the corner I was least likely to notice ‘em.’ His lips quirked. ‘Though, I suppose that sort of guaranteed you’d find it. You’ve a knack for finding your way into things you shouldn’t.’

‘Still. I’m sorry,’ she said, and then hesitated for a moment. Should she prompt him for more now that he seemed in an open mood? Or should she let it lie? Considering his expression, she chose the middle ground of making light of it. ‘I mean, I just can’t picture you _wearing_ those things.’

The Doctor’s ears turned pink, but thankfully his shaken expression disappeared. It morphed into the familiar over-the-top man-hurt one she’d come to associate with him pretending offense at her teasing.

‘On that note,’ he told her, turning to leave, ‘I’ve got to get back to work. Think if I work through the night I can get everything done tonight. Maybe stop for dinner somewhere with chips?’

It was an olive branch and she accepted it gladly.

‘Sounds great,’ she grinned. ‘Let’s just hope nothing else goes wrong before we get them, yeah?’

‘Well don’t jinx it,’ he complained as he left the room.

 


	5. Chapter Five

**_Curtains_ **

**_by ErtheChilde_ **

_‘I’m not a miracle worker.’_

 

The Doctor bounded down the hallway to Rose’s room, fairly tickled at his own brilliance. He’d managed to finish all of the repairs during the night. He was a full day ahead of schedule, which meant they could go land somewhere interesting earlier than he had expected.

He was impatient to share the news with Rose; no doubt she’d be happier about the news than he was!

He reached for the door handle, intent on just striding right inside, before remembering what had happened last time. He didn’t even need the TARDIS chiming in his head to remind him why knocking might be a better idea.

Rose Tyler in her knickers was not a sight he wanted to become used to seeing. Because he was above that sort of thing and all.

He frowned.

Was it him, or did the usual justification seem a little weaker than usual?

Not wanting to dwell on whatever that could mean, he raised his hand an knocked – a bit awkwardly – on the door.

There was a muffled sound from within like a groan with a question attached.

‘Coming in,’ he announced, refusing to ask permission to enter a room in his own ship. If she had a problem with it, she’d tell him not to come in. When that didn’t happen after a second or so, he entered the room.

He was a bit nonplussed to find Rose still abed, not even changed out of her pajamas and practically wearing her featherbed. Glancing over at the alarm by her bed which kept Earth time despite his insistences that it was useless, he saw that it was a full two hours later than she usually woke up.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ he demanded bluntly.

She offered him a watery smile. ‘S’nothing. Just not feeling very well today.’

A jolt of worry raced through him.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Really, Doctor, it’s nothing – just a…just a stomach thing.’

‘Highly unlikely, that. We haven’t been anywhere with anything contagious since Persia,’ he told her. ‘Even if you could catch something – which you can’t because the TARDIS ensures the health of anyone that travels in her, just so we can avoid nasty phenomena like virgin field epidemic – you’re long outside of the incubation period for anything a human could catch in Persia.’

She was giving him a look like he’d completely missed the point, and he went over his words in his head.

Right. Concern.

‘Be happy to run a check for you, if you like,’ he concluded.

‘I’m good.’

‘If you’re not feeling well, I should –’

‘I’m not sick!’ she snapped, and suddenly she was glaring at him.

‘Then why are you still in bed?’

‘If you can’t guess what’s wrong, you’re thick as dung,’ she told him dourly.

He blinked at the censored curse in that statement. Rose rarely swore in his hearing, and even if it had been filtered by the TARDIS, he’d have been puzzled by the vehemence.

For the first time since walking into the room he really stopped and considered. Taking in the symptoms – irritability, abdominal pain if the way she was curled around herself was any indication, the acne she’d been treating the evening before – he came to the obvious conclusion.

‘Is that all?’ he snorted. ‘Certainly your people would’ve evolved ways to get around that sort of thing by now? Honestly, how d’you think the great woman warriors of your antiquity deal with it Couldn’t stop a war just cos someone was experiencing their monthly cycle, could they.’ Rose’s mouth had dropped incrementally at his words, but before she could say anything, he went on, ‘Though, that would explain some of the more savage assaults in history.’ He shook his head. ‘Never mind. I’ve managed to finish all the repairs. Go on, then, put on one of those cotton nappy things so we can go.’

Rose was on her feet, then, which the Doctor considered to be a victory until he saw the way her eyes and cheeks were burning at him.

‘You can go wherever the hell you want _alone_!’ she snarled, tromping across the room and bodily shoving him back out the door. ‘I’m might be miserable, but you’re a git, and I don’t have to be around you when you’re full of…of…of gitfulness!’

And before he could even point out that that wasn’t a word, the door slammed in his face.

·ΘΣ·

Rose spent the rest of the morning stewing in her bad mood – already substantial when she woke up but ratcheted up to blistering proportions following the Doctor’s audacious comments.

Curled in the cocoon of her comforter, she tried to forget the entire mortifying exchange had ever happened, while at the same time thinking some rather uncharitable things about her best friend.

She’d gotten enough flack about her painful monthlies from PE teachers and work supervisors that thought she was just trying to skive off.

‘Just shake it off,’ she’d been told by her mates back home, who didn’t realize that the disorder was an actual serious issue for her. The first day was always the worst, not matter how much aspirin she took. Once she got through it, though, she could probably grin and bear the next two days without trouble. The Doctor was right in one respect – she couldn’t just put her life on hold because of a minor medical condition.

Well, at the moment it didn’t feel so minor, but still.

_Maybe I should call mum to commiserate with_ , she mused lightly, before deciding against it. Jackie would use it as an excuse for her to come home – and then every time after that, as well.

Eventually, her curled up foetal position started making her back and neck hurt, so she went to take a long hot shower, hoping the heat would help ease some of the ache.

A part of her – the miniscule, still reasonable part – felt a bit guilty for snapping at the Doctor like that. Yes, he’d been a bit of a prat about the whole thing, but she had never explained her situation to him. He’d probably have understood if she told him she had a medical condition.

Though, to be honest, she didn’t like talking with him about this kind of stuff. He was always so dismissive of human physiological quirks, even when he was trying to be clinical about something.

For the first time since leaving with the Doctor, Rose missed Shareen fiercely. If only she had a girlfriend that she could complain to and vent at. The Doctor wasn’t exactly the typical bloke friend she could talk to like that – even if he was gay, he was definitely not someone you could sit down with and share a box of chocolates over ,while complaining about cramps and men and such.

At this point, Rose was actually out of the shower and had her mobile in her hand, ready to dial up Shareen.

She didn’t end up doing so, however.

If she did call her friend, she’d have to make up stories about where she was and what she’d been up to. On her last trip home she’d barely managed to explain the whole “missing-for-a-year” fiasco. Shareen had only forgiven her if she received regular updates about what she’d been doing, and Rose hadn’t thought up and ways to de-alien any of her stories yet.

She sighed and put the phone down.

_So much for that idea_.

The realization that she was completely alone in all this, coupled with a grumbling stomach, made her mood worse.

She wrapped herself in her most comfortable clothing and shuffled out of her room in search of something to comfort her. She half-hoped the Doctor wouldn’t be anywhere around, because she was still mad at him. The other part of her hoped he was, because she was lonely enough to want company and someone to coddle her.

_Yeah, cos that’s gonna happen_ , she rolled her eyes and almost laughing out loud at the idea of her gruff, snarky Doctor patting her head and going ‘there-there’. It was almost as amusing an image as the idea of him in any of the clothing she had seen the other day.

In the kitchen, she was surprised to find a piping hot cup of tea waiting for her, along with a package of chocolate chip cookie dough and prawn kettle crisps.

‘Oh, that’s lovely,’ she murmured, thinking that maybe the day was beginning to look up.

Ish.

It was when Rose found herself in the multimedia room with a selection of her favorite movies queued up and a blanket that seemed to have been just warmed in a dryer that she was finally convinced that the TARDIS was alive. If she hadn’t believed she was female before, by the time she finished the third movie and the blanket remained the same toasty temperature as when she put it on she was a convert.

Unfortunately, it didn’t help the jabbing pains through her lower back and abdomen. She’d already downed the limit of painkillers that she’d brought with her and wondered if there wasn’t something in the sickbay that might help.

Offering up a request to the TARDIS not to make her journey longer than it had to be, Rose set off.

·ΘΣ·

Annoyed that Rose would rather prioritize something as trite as “comfort” over an adventure – and his apology trip, no less! – the Doctor had decided to go do something without her.

Which was how he had ended up on a planet with a brown sky and grass like living flame, where the atmosphere was toxic to humans.

He wasn’t sure if he’d picked the location just to spite his companion, or if the TARDIS put him here to spite him. Either way, he was running for his life all alone and not having a bit of fun doing so.

In his hands, he was cradling a weather-vane shaped object that he knew to be a crude form of psychograft, but which the natives of this particular rock believed to be relic left to them by the ancestors to ensure continued peace and prosperity.

In reality, the older generation had been using it to enslave the younger generations so that they could live forever. Repeated use of the thing had also caused a bit of insanity –

As evidenced by the knife-wielding, spittle-expelling savage that had just knocked him to the ground.

The purple pygmy creature sbarled and babbled incomprehensively at him, attempting to pinion him with his crude dagger, but the Doctor managed to kick it off and roll himself back to his feet.

It turned out that a fifth of those who used the device ended up completely out of their heads. The ruling council regularly meted out punishment by feeding insurgents to the poor feral souls.

A fate no doubt reserved for him if he didn’t hurry the hell up.

As he legged it back to the TARDIS, he glanced behind him a few times and noticed that the wild man had been joined by another half dozen of his mates.

‘Bleeding fantastic,’ he grunted, putting on a final burst of speed.

He was more than relieved once he saw the TARDIS in the distance. Thankfully, she’d left the door unlocked, because he didn’t even have to get his key out before vaulting into the console room.

‘Give the man a meddle!’ he bragged to the empty console room, twirling the weathervane device in his hand before setting it down on the jump seat.

Another adventure down, another civilization changed for the better. Without any means of taking over the bodies of their younger generation, the bad seeds among the elders would die off and new blood could take over.

The Doctor’s grin faded though, realization hitting him that that fact wasn’t as satisfying as it usually was.

He missed Rose’s comments, and how outraged she would have been at what was going on, and how keen she would’ve been to fix it.

She’d have been a good lookout, too, and made sure he didn’t almost get attacked by some lunatic and then had a smile or a hug or a hand squeeze at the end of it.

Possibly all three.

His thoughts drifted back to their interchange that morning. He nearly shuddered at the sheer domesticity of it, before reflecting on the fact that Rose had actually seemed like she was in pain.

He’d heard discomfort was normal, but actual pain?

He absently headed toward the library to look something up.

·ΘΣ·

The TARDIS didn’t lead her to the medbay.

When Rose went through the nearest door, she saw that she was in the main library – and it wasn’t empty.

The Doctor was in the big easy chair by the fireplace, a book in hand and his forehead wrinkled in concentration. It was a pose she had become familiar with in her short tenure on board the TARDIS, and she couldn’t help the soft snort that escaped her at the sound.

Instantly the Doctor was up and on his feet, considering her warily.

‘Hello,’ Rose offered hesitantly, wiggling her fingers at him in an approximation of his own habitual greeting.

‘Feeling better, then?’ he asked neutrally.

It was an instinctual thing to lie and say she was, the way she’d become used to back home. Instead she offered a half-hearted shrug. ‘Not really, no.’

‘Then why are you here?’ The bluntness of that question was unexpected, and Rose almost took a step back in reaction to it. Before she could even process the bit of hurt she felt at that, he went on. ‘Shouldn’t you be in bed? More comfortable than standing.’

Oh. He was concerned for her.

‘Yeah, I…I was. All day, pretty much. But I just…ran out of painkillers. Have you got aspirin?’

‘Of course not!’

‘Sorry, I was only asking…’

‘Bit like asking if you keep cyanide in your medicine cabinet. Though with a mother like yours I could understand it…’

‘Stop it.’

‘Just mean that it’s poison to me, is all.’

That caught her off guard. ‘Really?’

‘Yep. Call it a severe allergy.’

‘Oh. Good to know. I guess.’

Again they were standing there awkwardly, and she wished she hadn’t come in here after all. Until the Doctor rolled his eyes, and snapped, ‘You gonna stand there all day, or what?’

He gestured to his spot in the easy chair, and realizing he meant for her to take his place, she moved toward it.

As she settled in to the chair, she noticed what she hadn’t before, hidden as it was by the back of the chair. There was a low end table beside the chair, and on it an assortment of food, both alien and recognizable – ginger biscuits, a bowl of almonds, several squares of dark chocolate, a pot of tea, plate of celery and hummus.

‘Did you do all this?’ she asked, tactfully leaving the “for me” off the end of her question.

He crossed his arms defensively. ‘They’re all foods of significant nutritional value, and they all have the benefit of reducing the discomfort of dysmenorrhea.’

A lump was beginning to form at the back of Rose’s throat, the uncharacteristic sweetness of his gesture affecting her already muddled hormones.

‘Though, really, you’re gonna have to get over this, because the universe doesn’t stop once a month because you’re on –’ At her look, he bit of what he was going to say, and amended, ‘I’m just saying, we could have another long spell somewhere like Persia. I understand it’s biological, but women from your time have become remarkably complacent about this sort of thing. Even your primate ancestors would be calling you out for it.’

‘And you were doing so well before,’ Rose sighed. Before he could asked, she went on, ‘Look, if you know a way to stop it happening that won’t turn be green or something, I’m all for it. You don’t know how many drugs I tried, but all they ever did was make me feel horrible.’

‘Twenty-first century medication,’ he snorted. ‘Why not just take a blow to the back of the head and be done with it, for all the use it is? Anyhow – there’re some twenty-sixth century medications in the medbay. They should be closest to what your system can handle, given a few tweaks. They’ll completely halt your menstrual cycle for twelve months and have an added contraceptive effect. And they won’t turn you green.’

If it kept them from ever having to go through this conversation again, she was ready to try anything.

‘Thanks for this,’ she told him. ‘I know it’s _really_ not your area.’

He shifted uncomfortably. ‘Dunno about that. High maintenance female…story of my life, really.’

‘I bet if the TARDIS had hands, she’d slap you.’

‘Better than biting. For some reason, I get the sense she’d be a biter.’

‘Still…Most blokes –’

‘Not most blokes, am I? Besides, it’s just a subsidiary of human reproductive behaviour. Not the first time I’ve had to deal with it, is it?’

‘Is it?’

‘Had to stay in a brothel, once, when all the rooms in town were double-booked,’ he told her. ‘Nice place, the Madam was a hell of a cribbage player.’

‘…You would be playing cards in a brothel.’

‘What else was I supposed to do?’ he looked genuinely confused, more proof that he had no interest in women. Or possibly even in sex. ‘Anyhow, the place used to shut down once a month when they were all going through their cycle. Everyone sat around telling ghost stories by the fire. Not a bad way to spend an evening, that.’

‘So’s that what we’re going to do?’ Rose teased. ‘Are you gonna tell me ghost stories?’

‘Me? You’re the one who’s indisposed,’ he protested. ‘I think you should be the one telling the stories, seeing as how it’s you keeping us from going out and doing anything important.’

She jabbed a finger in his direction. ‘You’re not allowed to hold this against me.’

‘Says who?’

‘Says me, right now. It’s a new rule.’

‘You’re not allowed to make the rules.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s my ship.’

‘Have you told that to the TARDIS?’ Rose returned sweetly. ‘Pretty sure she sees you as a bit of a pet, more than anything else.’

‘Oi!’

The rest of the evening passed in easy banter, the awkwardness of the day forgotten.


	6. Chapter Six

**_Curtains_ **

**_by ErtheChilde_ **

_‘I’m not a miracle worker.’_

 

_Twin suns burned overhead, filtering through grey clouds in a clear orange sky. Fields of red grass rippled lazily in the breeze, while air whistled through silver-leaved trees at their edge. In the distance, the lake glittered warm and brown in the sunslight, snow-capped mountains reflected in the natural mirror._

_Trunkikes warbled at each other and the sound of children running and playing filled the air._

_‘Hurry up, Thete, or we’ll miss all the good ones!’ a familiar voice called out to him, and a bevy of flutterwings rose into the air, startled at the sound._

_A woman laughed warmly from somewhere behind him, and he felt a hand brushing his face. Indistinct, soft words were spoken to him until all of a sudden they weren’t so indecipherable._

_‘How many children on Gallifrey right now?’_

_‘I don’t know,’ he whispered._

_The scene shifted, becoming a desert and a single, familiar house in the distance. He was alone, but he could feel someone standing behind him._

_‘One day, you will count them,’ a breathy voice murmured to him. ‘One terrible night.’_

_There were people coming out of the house – children – his children. His grandchildren. Even so far away, their faces were stronger than memory for him. They had never all been together like this, all gathered before him, but they were now and they were watching him expectantly._

_‘Father?’ a young man asked._

_‘Grandfather?’ two children, a boy and a girl, echoed._

_Susan was there too, and she opened her mouth, but the words that came out were not hers._

_‘You’re going to burn it,’ she told him. ‘And all those Daleks with it, but all those children too.’_

_The idyllic vista of his home planet seemed to erode and shatter, a sudden incursion of Dalek ships in the air and rapid gunfire exploding into the air. The distant laughter from before turned to screams and the faceless voice was speaking again._

_‘One big bang,’ she whispered. ‘No more Time Lords. No more Daleks. Are you sure?’_

_‘No more,’ he murmured, shaking his head._

_The words appeared everywhere, tattooed across the battlefield and the faces of the people he was about to kill. They were all saying it now – the mysterious voice, the boy from his childhood, all of his children and grandchildren, the Daleks –_

_He found himself running – always running – trying to save people, trying to fight, and always being too late. Or worse, managing to save them only to have his work undone the next day. Or to have time reset on him, and have to do it all over again as various battle strategies were tried and discarded._

_Time went on, and he grew tired. There was a gun in his hands, and with every twitch of his finger, blood spattered across a face. The faces of his companions, the ones he couldn’t save or worse, the ones he broke._

_Katarina, Dodo, Jamie, Zoe, Adric, Tegan, Kamelion, Peri –_

_The gun in his hand now pointed at Rose. He tried to put it down, tried to reach for her but she jerked away._

_‘Don’t touch me!’ Rose snarled, words that others had said but which hurt all the more coming from her. ‘_

_‘Rose –!’_

_You’re a time Lord. Get away from me!’_

_‘Rose, please – !’_

_‘Go back to your battlefield. You haven’t finished yet. Some of the universe is still standing,’ she hissed, and before he could stop her she had taken his gun, put it to her forehead and pulled the trigger –_

‘NO MORE!’ he roared, jolting into an upright position and nearly knocking his head into Rose’s. She was leaning over him, hands poised over him like she was trying to shake him away.

The Doctor recoiled, lashing out and practically shoving Rose across the room in his haste to get to his feet. His brain whirred into action, taking only seconds as he pieced together what had happened.

Obviously he and Rose had fallen asleep in the library.

He remembered her nodding off as he read, but hadn’t wanted to move her, and so he’d continued to read late into the night. Apparently he’d fallen asleep as well. He hadn’t meant to, but he’d gone so long without it, his body had finally succumbed.

‘Doctor, it’s alright – you were just having a nightmare,’ she told him, looking concerned and sympathetic and…scared?

His eyes flicked over her, taking in the way she was holding her dressing gown to herself, almost protectively, and his mind ground back to a halt.

He’d shoved her, hadn’t he?

Shock and disgust barrelled through him, and he before he could calm himself, he demanded, ‘Are you alright?’

She looked confused. ‘M’fine. But what about you?’

‘Not your lookout.’

‘Yeah, but you were tossing and turning, and you were yelling – can I –?’

Too much, it was all too much!

‘You can’t do anything!’ he yelled. ‘So stop bloody trying to involve yourself in things that aren’t your business!’

‘Doctor –’

‘Always trying to be so good, and so understanding – you’ve no business trying to understand! With your prying and your questions and always bloody being in places you shouldn’t be! What exactly is the point of you?!’

That seemed to galvanize her, because she drew herself up to him, red faced and glaring. ‘I’ll tell you what it isn’t! To be treated like dung over trying to help a friend! Sorry I even bothered!’

And she rushed from the room, slamming the door on her way out.

·ΘΣ·

There was a lock on her room door that hadn’t been there before, and Rose was obscenely grateful for it.

Her heart was still beating madly at the absolutely wild and out of control rage in the Doctor’s eyes. For the first time since she met him, she had felt unsafe.

She gave the TARDIS a silent plea that she not let him in no matter what and tried to hold back tears. She wasn’t a crier by nature – she’d done it far too much when Jimmy was around and since then had refused to give into tears when they threatened – but her homes were out of whack and the Doctor was being…

She couldn’t even describe what was wrong with him and had no idea what she was supposed to do now.

‘I was only trying to help,’ she told the ceiling. Even if the TARDIS couldn’t answer her back, it was a living creature that could at least listen. ‘He shouldn’t’ve…what he said…’

She swallowed, thinking back on it.

Maybe he was right. She had a tendency to pry into things – but even so, she only did it because she knew talking about things helped. It was horrible while you were doing it, but afterward, you felt better. Her mother had insisted on that right from the beginning.

They always talked about her dad and the way he had died. Just like after Jimmy, her mother had told her if she couldn’t talk to her about what had happened, at least talk to Mickey or Shareen.

And it did.

_Though, I guess if I was having a dream of Jimmy having a go at me and someone woke me up from it, I’d probably take a swing at them,_ she allowed. Then she grimaced. ‘Cor, I’m just making excuses for him, aren’t I?’

It wasn’t a good position to be in normally, but when it came to the Doctor she was definitely over her head.

Somehow, without being conscious of it, she had made herself responsible for the betterment of another human being – _No, even more complicated than that – he’s alien!_ – without any clear idea of what she was doing.

‘He probably needs some kind of professional help,’ she reasoned. All she could do was be a friend. She didn’t have anything else to offer.

She was almost nineteen, and although she had grown up earlier than she should have, she knew enough to know she wasn’t supposed to be the one responsible for the mental health of another person. She’d spent her whole life doing something similar for Jackie, but was she now expected to do the same for the Doctor?

Except it had been different.

When it came to her mother, Jackie had had other people to help her. She’d had friends, her parents, the occasional decent bloke that chipped in. When Rose had been gone for that year, she’d obviously had some kind of support system to keep her hanging on.

But the Doctor, he didn’t have any one.

‘And that’s not my fault,’ she told herself slowly, a sense of understanding coming to her.

She didn’t have to shoulder any of the Doctor’s issues. She could be his friend and give him the company he so desperately needed, but she didn’t need to subject herself to any fits of temper like the one she had experienced tonight if she didn’t want to.

And if that meant he was going to bring her home, then…it was something she would have to live with.

Her stomach swooped unpleasantly at that idea. She didn’t want to go back to a mediocre life.

But she also didn’t want to be a victim in the place that she was quickly beginning to think of as home, either.

·ΘΣ·

After leaving the library, the Doctor didn’t even need to go very far for the room he was seeking. The TARDIS had the door open and in front of him before he even went three paces.

Entering it, he barely surveyed the room of broken items from lives long ago and people long lost, before picking up the nearby sledgehammer.

He then proceeded to smash anything within his immediate radius to pieces until he didn’t have the energy to lift the hammer any longer.

Considering the superior physiology he always boasted about, it was hours before he let up, reason finally making its presence known over his disgust and disbelief and anger.

He couldn’t believe how damaged he had become. He had hurt Rose – he might have hurt her worse if he hadn’t woken as quickly as he had, and understood his surroundings. Madness in the wake of a regeneration, that he understood – he’d nearly choked Peri to death once, hadn’t he? But post-traumatic stress…

He shivered.

What if one day he had another nightmare, or something triggered him? What if he lashed out again, only this time he did more than scare her? With the right amount of adrenaline running through his veins, he could throw her through a wall. He could paralyze or kill her.

Bile rose at the back of his throat at the thought.

And she’d stood there and asked him if _he_ was alright.

Either she was insane or he had lucked into the most forgiving person in the entire universe.

Whatever the case, he needed to apologize for his behaviour. And possibly some of his words, which upon reflection, hadn’t been above board.

But not until he got himself under control.

Surrounded by the broken bits of curios and punctured walls, the Doctor closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He couldn’t act like an out of control Neanderthal aagain.

Seizing on his years of practice, he flushed his body with the right mixture of biochemicals and hormones to bring his rebellious body under control. His adrenaline levels alone had been skyrocketed with the disorientation of his dream, but as he brought them down again he found his mind clearing exponentially.

His control was returning.

He spent another hour there, just ensuring that all of the fail-safes he’d gotten used to having in place were re-established, before leaving the room.

Before even stepping foot outside, the TARDIS started mentally prodding him. As he wandered the halls, she kept bringing up Rose’s door nearby. It was as if she wanted him to apologize immediately.

He tried to argue, maintaining that he needed to avoid the girl for a bit, just to get more in control of himself.

He thought he’d managed to convince the TARDIS of the same when the door stopped appearing, however upon walking into the console room, he found himself staring at a dishevelled looking Rose, calmly reading a magazine.

He wasn’t sure if she’d noticed him and started to back away, but then without even looking up, she said, ‘Well, are you just gonna stand there all day?’

·ΘΣ·

He was like a wary animal stepping out of a cage, she realized. Although he seemed in control of himself, there was something in the way he was looking at her that suggested he was still upset.

She needed a way to put him at ease, something to put them back on more familiar footing before she addressed what had happened in the library. Luckily, the TARDIS seemed to be on her side.

‘There was something beeping,’ she told him, and when he looked at her in confusion, she pointed to the console, ‘There. It was flashing red.’

This seemed to galvanize the Doctor into action, because he approached – the long way round, she noticed – and leaned over the console to examine it.

‘S’nothing important,’ he told her tonelessly. ‘Just a bit of a virus scanner. For the hardware bits.’

‘Ah.’

Awkward silence stretched between them.

‘So, I found this room the other day,’ she announced, apropos of nothing. ‘It had all these displays in it with men’s clothing. Some really weird thing, too. Like opera capes and _cravats_.’ She shot him a sideways glance. ‘And you said, when we were in Southampton, that you used to wear those...’

His tone was carefully neutral. ‘There a question in there somewhere?’

‘Were all those…did you _actually_ wear a cricket whites?’ she asked, a nervous giggle escaping her.

His face shifted into something like resignation. ‘Yes.’

‘What, on _purpose?’_

The Doctor offered her a tight smile. ‘I was a very different man, once.’

‘More than once, I’d say,’ she giggled. ‘So you, what, change up your outfits every hundred years or so?’

‘Something like that.’

‘If that’s the case, please let me choose what your next hundred will look like! Cos you’ve got awful fashion sense – I bet some of those getups didn’t even fit you properly!’

‘Think I did well enough this time around,’ he sniffed.

‘Definitely an improvement on the clown coat,’ she acknowledged, and this time his mouth twitched a bit in humour.

She didn’t have time to count it as a minor victory before his expression became grave again.

‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘For the way I acted before. I was…startled.’

‘You don’t have to apologize for having a nightmare,’ she told him. ‘You don’t even have to tell me what it was about. I know it takes a while to talk about some things. But what you said…after…’

‘I didn’t mean it,’ he said immediately.

‘Yeah, you did, or you wouldn’t’ve said it,’ she reasoned. ‘You’d never say something you didn’t mean, on some level. And if you really think that I…that I pry, then I’ll stop. It’s just…I was always taught it’s better to talk it out with someone so it doesn’t come to blows.’

‘It won’t happen. Ever again,’ he told her ruefully. ‘I’ll understand if you want to go home…’

‘Of course I don’t want to go home,’ she exclaimed. ‘I want to help my friend! But you, you’ve got to want help and stop being so…so _Time Lordy_ and saying nothing’s wrong or other stupid stuff like you don’t need to eat or sleep.’

‘I don’t –’

‘ Yes, you do – you avoid sleep because of your nightmares,’ she told him. ‘I used to do the same thing, after Jimmy. It didn’t do me any good. Made me a right terror to be around, actually.’

‘Well, you don’t have to be around me,’ he muttered, looking away. ‘It’s you’re choice –’

‘That’s right! It’s my bloody choice! And I choose to be here. Cos you know what? You’re important! To me, to the TARDIS – to the universe!’

She didn’t add that she knew what pressure he was under. He was the last of his kind, the only hope some people and some civilization would ever have of salvation. He couldn’t afford to be broken. And if the last thing she did in this world was to help him – if poor, unemployed, stupid little Rose Tyler was able to help this amazing alien get better – she’d do that job with every last fibre of her being.

But there needed to be some boundaries.

‘But, Doctor, if you don’t _want_ to be helped,’ she finished, quieter now at the very idea of it. ‘If you don’t want to…to get better…I can’t promise I’ll be here forever. It’s like they say, yeah? Can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves.’

‘And who are you to want to help me, Rose Tyler?’ he challenged, his eyes suddenly so old as he looked at her that she wanted to cry.

‘I’m me,’ she told him truthfully. ‘Just plain old human Rose Tyler. Not exactly a fierce alien, me.’ She tried to smile. ‘Completely harmless to some “superior Time Lord”.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ he told her seriously, and then looked away. There was a long pause, but when he looked back his eyes had returned to normal – sad, blue and intense – and he’d forced his fake smile on his face. ‘Right, then – that sorted?’

The subject change made her head spin, but to tell the truth, she had expected it to happen earlier.

She offered him an equally forced smile – they were both too emotionally tense right then to be easy around each other – and nodded. ‘Yeah. Sorted.’

‘You’d best get to bed, then,’ he told her, turning to face the Time Rotor. ‘Sleeping in that chair couldn’t have done much good to your back. Know from experience, me.’

She swallowed. ‘Yeah. Alright. Good.’

She headed for the hallway, then turned back. ‘Good-night Doctor.’

‘No such thing as night on the TARDIS, Rose.’

She couldn’t help smiling at that. ‘Good-night anyway.’

She was almost out the hallway before she heard a quiet, ‘Good-night, Rose.’


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I read the last few chapters and this one to a friend of mine, and he started going on about how Rose was being useless and mopey over getting her period and that it wasn’t such a big deal. I’d think it was just a guy not understanding, but he has three sisters, so he actually does. So I decided to clear the air a bit in case there are other readers questioning Rose’s behaviour and the amount of discomfort she is going through: dysmenorrhea is a real thing and severely affects at least 10% of women, many of whom have to actually spend one or two days in bed every month because they can barely walk from the pain. And the drugs that exist to deal with it don’t always have any affect. So before anyone writes Rose off as being a “typical weak female” or saying she should “just ignore it”…maybe shut up and do a little research.

**_ Curtains  
_ ** **_by ErtheChilde_ **

_‘I’m not a miracle worker.’_

**SEVEN**

The Doctor spent the rest of the night in the console room, alternating between fixing some of the TARDIS defense systems and staring into the distance.

Rose’s words to him, weeks ago as they left Victorian Cardiff behind, kept coming back to him. She’d tried to hint to him that he was exhibiting symptoms along the lines of PTSS, and he had confidently asserted it was impossible for a Time Lord to suffer from anything such thing.

And yet the more he thought about it, and the more his little outbursts began to increase in frequency, he couldn’t help wondering if she hadn’t been right.

Perhaps the reason no Time Lord had ever suffered from shellshock was because none of them had committed genocide on the scale he had. None of them had ever felt every single other mind in their awareness just wink out forever.

He hammered a little harder than he needed to on the safety precaution switch, which was sticking. He needed to clean out the spilled –

_Jam? How did jam get on that switch? I don’t even like jam!_

This was why food wasn’t allowed near the TARDIS controls! He’d be having a word with Rose about that, as soon as she got up.

Considering today was his second day with no tea or toast making an appearance (and he refused to admit he was starting to get used to her breakfast offerings upon waking up), he supposed she was still in bed. Whether that was due to her condition or being exhausted from the day before, he wasn’t completely sure.

He was feeling completely drained himself, and could only imagine how it must feel for her this morning.

_And Rassilon, she’s got me doing it now too_ , he thought disapprovingly. _Next thing you know, she’ll have us running on Earth time every day._

What else was she going to have him doing before she inevitably left him?

She’d already given him so many passes on his behaviour, when would he hit the limit of what she was willing to put up with? She might not bring up his most recent outburst again – might not even get angry if it happened again – but it was bound to happen.

Rose had her mother’s temper, and the fact that she was able to calmly tell him last night what the situation had to be…she was a lot stronger than she thought she was. He didn’t know why she kept referring to herself as simple or stupid or plain.

She was far more powerful than she knew, then any human had the right to be, and it was terrifying.

In fact, she was probably the only creature in existence right now that he truly feared on any given day.

If it were possible for any Daleks to have survived the war, he’d know how to deal with them. They were enemies he could fight, enemies he could take some sense of accomplishment in destroying. But combating someone who genuinely cared what he did with himself?

He had fought the Time War so long, he’d forgotten what it was like. What little bits of himself he had shared with friends and companions in his earlier life, when the War came he had closed off.

And now, he found himself automatically letting her in. There were days when remaining aloof was actually an effort for him! _Him!_ He had kept people at arms length practically his entire life, excelling at giving them an illusion of closeness without really letting them see the inner parts of himself.

There had been a few who broke through that barrier over time – Susan, Jo, Romana – but it hadn’t happened at quickly or completely as it was happening now with Rose.

He’d already let her in so far, more than he ever would have expected to be able to do after the war.

_Since when should any of it be her problem?_ he chided himself grimly.

He shouldn’t have put any of this on her, should never have let her know any of it.

But she said it was her choice. So if he chose not to do that, was he invalidating her choices?

_Bah, this is what comes from getting close to humans…their feelings begin to matter more than the bigger picture_.

Maybe this was why his people had insisted on remaining uninvolved with lower species. They were utterly illogical and did things that made no sense, things that could harm them in the end.

Like letting a dangerous alien aim a nuclear warhead in her direction.

He wouldn’t let her do that again, choices be damned.

And while the simple resolution to this whole matter continued to blare in his brain like a siren – just bring her home – he knew he couldn’t survive that right now. So the only obvious solution was to try to fix himself.

Forget what she said about the universe needing him, the universe could go hang for all he cared.

He needed to fix himself so she didn’t leave.

·ΘΣ·

Rose stumbled out of her bathroom, muddled and grimacing from the burning sensation in her throat. Her stomach, already empty before, rebelled at the literal upheaval she had just put it through.

She didn’t know why she was so sick today – usually it was only the first day that that was bad, and she rarely got stomach sick because of it. Right now, she like she’d just gone three rounds with a vitavore.

_Suppose my schedule’s a bit muddled up,_ she thought as she headed back to her bed.

She’d been under more stress lately than she’d expected a few days idling in the Vortex to cause. Part of it was on her own shoulders: instead of going to bed angry last night (or possibly very early that morning), she’d chosen to sort things with the Doctor. The lack of sleep must be affecting everything else.

_Which makes it even worse, cos I don’t want to spend another day in bed._

She was utterly fed-up with feeling useless, and the boredom didn’t help.

Upon reaching her bed, she noticed that her bedside table seemed a little fuller than usual. There were a bunch of rather thick books stacked there that she knew hadn’t been there before. Upon further study, she saw that they were a bunch of titles about PTSS and how to help people suffering from it.

‘Trying to help us both, aren’t you?’ she asked the ship. ‘Thanks.’

Though her head felt too muddled to wade through any of it now, she was grateful the TARDIS seemed to be on her side about the whole thing.

_And look at me, thinking that’s normal now, a space ship bringing me books_ , she thought wryly. _And with how much trouble I had accepting her in my head before._

Now she didn’t mind the idea of the TARDIS in her head. She knew that nothing the Doctor loved so obviously could be bad or hurtful towards her, and the ship truly cared about the Doctor.

Seeing as how the books were only appearing now, Rose wondered if it meant the Doctor was finally accepting the possibility that he could be suffering from the disorder.

She hoped so.

The Doctor deserved to be happy. The way he looked when he was thinking about his planet or his people or the Time War – even when he wasn’t having one of the outbursts she’d experienced in the past two days – the way grief could suffuse his entire face made her stomach clench painfully. She much preferred him laughing, especially when he let that manic, untrue smile that he’d worn almost since they met drop, and replaced it with a genuine smile.

It was rare, but worth it.

·ΘΣ·

Funny thing, pockets. You never knew what you were going to find in there.

He’d been sonicking a cashpoint so that he could purchase a poutine for Rose (it might not be especially helpful nutrition wise, but it was bound to put her in a good mood) when a note had fallen out of his pocket. It was written in the hand of his fifth self, advising him to head to London in 1483 and leave a message for two of his wayward companions that had been stranded there.

He was a bit weary of it, considering how meetings with former companions usually went, but it turned out they weren’t there when he arrived at the Kingmaker tavern on Fleet Street. The owner had promised to pass on the message, and the Doctor had hurried on his way, satisfied that he’d managed not to tempt any major paradoxes with a meeting between himself and old Cricket Whites.

Of course, things had gone downhill when he’d walked in on two brutes brawling in the street and one of them ended up a knife in his back. The terrified man had somehow managed to blame the Doctor for it, and he’d ended up on the run from the authorities lest he spend another afternoon in the squalor of Newgate prison.

He’s only just made it back to the TARDIS, hours after he’d gone out.

Rose was waiting for him, curled up on the jump seat with a book.

‘There are more comfortable places for you to sit,’ he told her as he closed the door behind him.

‘Yeah, but everywhere else is so quiet,’ she made a face. ‘It’s boring.’

He snorted. ‘Not much going on here even when I am in the room. Unless you want to help upgrade the software for the autocleaning systems.’

‘Nah, think I’ll just sit and watch you play with your toys,’ she grinned.

He shot her an annoyed look. ‘That’s a bit far, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ she replied. ‘All you do is tinker in here. Sometimes I think you just do it to keep your hands busy.’

‘D’you know how difficult it is to properly maintain and run a TARDIS now that most of the mechanical parts are no longer available?’ he challenged, and proceeded to detail exactly why it was important that he “tinker”, as she called it.

He didn’t tell her, however, that even when Gallifrey had still existed he had almost never gone back there for upgrades or new parts. Especially not after they started on him to replace his TARDIS with a newer model. It had become a point of pride (and contention, when he was travelling with the likes of Romana) that he could manage so long without having to go back, choosing rather to cobble together a solution using only cotton wool and a box of liquorice.

_Cos really, that’s a talent right there, I don’t care what species you are_ , he thought smugly.

But back then, his creative repairs had meant something different. They had been his way of expressing his annoyance with the stuffy, guideline-infested society of the Time Lords; a way of shoving it in their faces just how much he wasn’t part of their mould. No manuals and rulebooks for him to follow in his own home, because he refused to let their reach extend there.

Of course, that usually had the unfortunate side effect of him having to spend most of his free time repairing objects and systems that he’d “fixed” in the past, instead of upgrading and repairing the original infrastructure and circuitry like he should have…

But he wasn’t about to tell that to Rose, who looked entirely too amused about his rather important lecture on the systems that would keep her eyes from boiling out of her head than she should.

‘So where were you all day?’ Rose asked suddenly while he was taking a breath, and he realized she had been staring at him nonplussed for about ten minutes now. Obviously she hadn’t retained a thing that he’d been saying.

He sighed and muttered, ‘Went to get chips, got caught up in a bit of time loop that needed closing.’

‘Sounds a bit tame for you.’

‘Oh, yeah, easily sorted – but then there was a bit of mistaken identity and I had to leg it back here.’

‘Now _that’s_ what I expect to hear,’ she nodded. ‘So where’re the chips?’

He opened his mouth an raised an empty hand, before realization set in. He’d forgotten the chips. ‘Ah.’


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AN:** For the record, anything I describe on the TARDIS comes from one form of canon or another. I didn’t just make it up, and if you don’t believe me, check out the Doctor Who wiki.

**_ Curtains  
_ ** **_by ErtheChilde_ **

_‘I’m not a miracle worker.’_

**EIGHT**

The Doctor dearly needed a distraction. 

He was itching to go out and do something, but with everything that had occurred in the past two days, he was just as intent on Rose being with him when he did.

The TARDIS was completely travel ready now, and Rose’s condition should be improving – 

‘Ah, on that note.’

With a businesslike nod, he headed for the sickbay. He needed to whip up that contraceptive shot for her so that she needn’t worry about her cycle in the coming year. He was only concerning himself with it for practical purposes, of course; he didn’t want any more petty human problems interfering with future travel plans.

Never mind that he had a natural aversion to watching her be in any kind of pain and the shot would completely eradicate that scenario.

Of course, it also meant that she was free to… _associate_ with anyone she felt inclined towards, but that was no never mind to him. Human prerogative and all that.

Besides, she had a boyfriend, didn’t she? And she was obviously the faithful type – he was momentarily cheered at that though, and the unaccountably annoyed as Mickey’s face flashed before him.

Useless lump.

Task done, the Doctor headed to Rose’s room and let himself in without thought, only remembering at the last minute what had happened the last time he did that.

Thankfully, this time Rose appeared to be completely dressed, but he couldn’t be sure because she was still ensconced in her bed, sound asleep.

He considered her for a time – she was innocent and younger looking in her sleep than awake. 

She also snored like a truck driver. He should probably give her something for that, sleep apnea tended to lead to cardiac problems in humans from her era, and – 

‘Doctor?’

His ears perked up, thinking she was awake, but when her breathing pattern and heartbeat remained steady, he realized she was only talking in her sleep.

_Best leave then_ , he decided. It wasn’t right to listen to what people said in such unguarded moments.

As he drew away, though, Rose’s movements suddenly became fitful and her heartbeat sped up. She started to mutter unintelligible, sleep and lack of motor skills slurring her words. He was able to make out some of it, though.

‘…s’chasing me…s-stop…please…stop hittin’ me…!’

Eyes widened, he took a step forward, wondering if this was the point where he should wake her or not. Given the rough wake-up he’d had when the circumstances were reversed, he didn’t want to cause Rose anxiety by leaning over her or end up in the path of a wayward slap.

When she let out a wordless whimper, though, his hand was moving. He brushed his fingers against the back of her hand, careful and hesitant; he made sure not to touch any other part of her while she slept because that would be an invasion of personal space.

She suddenly flipped her hand around, clutching his fingers tightly. ‘Doctor?’

‘Right here, Rose,’ he told her quietly.

Her entire demeanor relaxed and she fell back into quiet slumber.

The Doctor sat with her until she eventually let go of his hand, and then stood up to leave. He’d come back when she was awake.

_Then again_ , he took measure of the sleeping human once more, _she might have another nightmare_.

If she needed a hand to hold, he ought to be the one to do the job. It’s what she had offered him, after all. The least he could do was return the favor.

So decided, he settled into the squishy chair a few feet from her bed and reached for one of the god-awful magazines she liked to peruse.

·ΘΣ·

Rose felt herself gradually emerge from unconsciousness with the somwhat disjointed feeling of having dreamed but being unable to remember what about. Blinking up at the ceiling, she slowly stretched her entire body and felt her lips quirk into a smile. 

She felt a lot better than yesterday – not quite as bloated or achy, even if she didn’t see herself running any marathons in the near future. Maybe if she convinced the Doctor (and possibly the TARDIS), they could go visit a beach or something low-key that day. She could manage a bit of discomfort if it meant doing something other than occupying a well-worn space on the couch.

Yawning hugely, she pushed herself into an upright position – and let out a shriek.

‘You make very odd noises in your sleep,’ the Doctor remarked from where he was sitting in the chair beside her bed, one of her fashion magazines open on his lap.

‘What – the – hell – are – you – _doing_!?’ she hissed, scrambling around her bedclothes to make sure she didn’t have a breast poking out of her pajama vest and checking her chin to make sure she hadn’t been drooling in her sleep.

‘Waiting for you to wake up,’ he answered, nonplussed.

‘In my bedroom?!’

‘Good a place as any – oi!’ The stuffed cat, which was providing a stand-in for Rose’s childhood teddy bear Mr. Tedopoulos, made sudden violent contact with his nose. ‘Could you not resort to violence?’

‘You just came in here, didn’t even wait to see if it was okay?’

‘Why wouldn’t it be okay? You were sleeping, not getting dressed.’

‘You utter… _alien_!’

‘Last I checked, yeah –’

‘Doesn’t the word _privacy_ mean anything to you?’ she demanded, hauling him away from the chair. Hadn’t she had a lock on the door?

A quick glance told her the lock had disappeared overnight.

‘It’s my ship, my rules – and there’s no such thing as privacy unless I – ‘ She managed to push him out of the room, and close the door, his voice instantly became muffled, ‘ – say so.’

‘There’s gonna be bloody privacy, you great hulking alien git!’ she yelled through the door. When she looked down, she saw that the lock had returned. ‘I don’t care if you’re the savior of the universe or not, I’ll thump you if you don’t blinking knock next time!’

‘Dunno what you’re getting your nose all bent out of shape for,’ came the grumbled reply, and she rolled her eyes at that. 

She strode into the ensuite to shower – taking as long as possible in order to punish him a bit for coming into her room without her permission. And then accusing her of impossible things, like snoring!

He was still talking at her door when she came out to do her make-up, a low rumbling murmur she could only decipher some parts of.

‘– not as if there’s anything in here I haven’t seen before –‘

It wasn’t the fact that he’d been awake while she slept that bothered her. Any human man that did that, she might have been a bit uneasy – there was always some ulterior motive in that case – but the Doctor just didn’t think along those lines. The fact he’d come in without asking her, the fact he kept insisting that the TARDIS was completely his, when they were supposed to be…well, roommates, more or less.

‘ – emulating your mother, you can stay far away from me –‘

If that was the case, she had to be able to have a place for herself where he wouldn’t be able to come in without her wanting him to. And not just in cases like the day before where she’d needed to lock herself away because she’d been a little afraid of him.

‘ – not one of your little friends, or your useless boyfriend –’

_The lock needs to stay there,_ she thought to the TARDIS. _Just until he understands why knocking’s important._

_‘ –_ should’ve picked a companion from before women’s lib –’

There was no response that she could hear, but the ship had been so good to her lately that she instinctively knew she’d been understood.

‘ – course, she gets along with the TARDIS, both impossible –’

Which meant now she had to explain it to the other alien.

‘ – incessant need to adhere to your redundant human rituals – ‘

She opened the door, confirming that he had basically been lecturing it the entire time as if she’d been standing behind it listening.

‘Are you done?’ she interrupted.

He crossed his arms, defiant. ‘Was only in your room to bring you the contraceptive we talked about.’

It took her a moment to realize what he was talking about, and she flushed. ‘Oh. Well, thanks. But you know, generally, when you see someone’s sleeping, you just come back later.’

He shifted uncomfortable, like he wasn’t sure what to say to that, and promptly changed the subject all together.

‘I was waiting for you to wake up cos I had an idea for today. Figured you wouldn’t be up to anything strenuous today, but if you’re not sick of exploring, I could…I dunno…give you a private tour pf the TARDIS? Bet there’re some places you never in thought to go looking for.’

‘That’s…that actually sounds great,’ Rose admitted, deciding to let his avoidance of the issue lie for now. She could tell that getting him to understand privacy was bound to be a work in progress. ‘So d’you need  my arm or leg for this shot, or what?’

He snorted. ‘Typical twenty-first century preoccupation with needles. It’s a patch. Dissolves into your system through the skin.’

Rose grinned. ‘Have I mentioned I love future medical technology?’

‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever seen a singularity scalpel used wrong,’ he informed her grimly.

·ΘΣ·

It had been a long time since the Doctor wandered through the TARDIS for the simple pleasure of it, instead of tracking down lost objects or carrying out repairs in the different wings of the ship. He had also forgotten how enjoyable it was to explore it with another person, and the sense of marvel they always conveyed. 

For so long, the Doctor had just gotten used to the TARDIS simply providing for his needs or hiding things she didn’t think he was meant to find, he had forgotten the novelty of it. 

With Rose, each time the look of delight crossed her features, he remembered how he’d felt upon his first tour of the TARDIS. The bittersweet memory was strengthened by the fact that Rose’s exclamations and comments were eerily similar to the ones Susan had made at the time.

He pushed open a door to his right and motioned for her to go in before him.

‘Blimey!’ she breathed, looking at the arched hallways filled with paintings and sculptures that seemed to go on endlessly.

‘Biggest collection of Earth’s lost art you’ll ever see,’ he told her smugly. ‘‘Course, it’s got nothing on Oriel – remind me to take you there some time – but it’s something special. Every few decades I let some enthusiast find a piece, if I know it’ll be properly taken care of this time around.’

She squinted at Rembrandt’s _Storm on the Sea of Galilee_ and gave him a skeptical look. ‘So you’re like a curator or something?’

‘I could be a curator,’ he protested. ‘I’d be great at curating. I could retire from saving the universe and do that!’

‘Sorry, I just don’t see it…I mean, there’s so much more interesting out there than paintings, you’d be itching to get out within five minutes.’

‘Sounds like you’re not impressed by my frankly fantastic art gallery,’ he accused.

‘I’m plenty impressed – but it’s sort of...predictable? I can sort of understand it being here, is all. The swimming pools, though, now that was unexpected.’

He shot her a look. ‘That supposed to sound like a challenge?’

‘Sort of, yeah,’ she retorted with a tongue-touched smile.

And so he set off, intent on showing her something that would render her speechless. He thought he might manage it with the rainforest he brought her too – and she was admiring of that too – but not quite as much as he expected her to be.

‘This is a frankly brilliant bit of block transfer computations at work here,’ he demanded, as dew trickled through the damp air around them and rare birds sang to each other in the distance. ‘How can you not think this is amazing?’

‘It’s definitely amazing,’ she told him. ‘But that’s sort of…stationary, yeah? I saw before that the TARDIS can make huge fields and cricket pitches and stuff. Why not a rain forest.’

‘You have no right being so incredibly picky.’

‘I’m not picky! It’s all great – but you were going on like you had the Taj Mahal in here!’

She was obviously teasing him – he’d seen her mouth drop at the vastness of the forest and the flora surrounding him. He could either take offense on behalf of his ship, or take it as a challenge.

‘Right then, Rose Tyler, you asked for it!’

·ΘΣ·

‘That’s never a dodo!’ Rose gaped, staring across the endless pathways of the apparently fully stocked zoo that the Doctor had on board the TARDIS.

‘Yep.’

‘But those are extinct!’

‘Most of the animals in here are…or on the verge of it,’ he told her. ‘Over the years, did my best to relocate them to suitable habits, but it takes a while to find the right planet, and introducing certain species to certain eco-systems…’ He trailed off with a shrug. ‘Until I can get them somewhere safe, they stay here.’

‘Who cares for all the animals?’ Rose asked as she wandered among the habitats. There were no cages here, just synthetic habitats that completely mimicked the environment of the creature in question.

‘The TARDIS, of course.’

‘As if she doesn’t have her hands full with you!’

‘Oi!’

‘I can’t believe you’ve got all these animals in here.’

‘How d’you think Noah’s Arc worked?’ 

‘Well, it’s official,’ Rose decided. ‘I’m never going to be surprised, ever again.’

The Doctor’s eyes glinted at that, and she saw the same bit of defiance there as when she had challenged him to show her something more impressive than a rain forest.

‘There’s one more thing I want to show you,’ he told her. ‘Most impressive bit, I think, but I’m biased. It’s always been my favorite spot.’

‘Then why didn’t we go there first?’ Rose asked.

‘Come now, every tour needs a piece de resistance,’ he pointed out. He hesitated, and then added. ‘Also, I know some humans get a bit upset when they see it.’

She was definitely intrigued now, and so took his hand. ‘Show me.’

 

 

 

 


	9. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone who took the time to read this and leave kudos! You're awesome!

**_ Curtains  
_ ** **_by ErtheChilde_ **

_‘I’m not a miracle worker.’_

**NINE**

The room that the Doctor brought Rose to this time was so completely dark that it was like stepping into a solid stretch of black. She wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this one, but she trusted the Doctor.

‘Close the door behind you,’ he instructed.

As soon as she did, cutting off the dim light of the hallway outside, she experienced a moment of total darkness. And then her surroundings suddenly exploded into view all around her.

And entire galaxy filled the room – possibly a chamber or a hall, she had no idea how large it was in there – a swirling spiral of suns, planets and dust. The light of the stars cast waves of colour across the black of space, turning purple in some places, blue in others and a fiery orange around still others. Comets and asteroids, as well as other space debris, rotated through the air with so much detail that if she actually leaned forward to look at any one she could see the exact texture of them. 

It was all obviously some kind of holograph, the solid masses occasionally floating insubstantially through the Doctor and Rose as they stood there, but something about the entire setup just felt extremely weighty and solid.

‘Been all over the universe,’ the Doctor told her quietly. ‘Almost everywhere I’ve gone, there’s some bit of appreciation for the universe and how big it is. So many civilizations have tried to explain it…they don’t know the answers the way my people did, but sometimes…sometimes I think I like their fairy stories better than the reality.’

‘Yeah?’ she prompted, unable to formulate any really insightful response to that in her amazement at the galaxy she was standing in the middle of.

‘Hm,’ he nodded. ‘My favorite myth of creation is that of the Vekko people.’ He paused, giving her a look like was considering something, and then continued. ‘Long, long ago there was only blackness. A heavy, suffocating desert of emptiness – the infinity of the void where there was no space and no time. It howled with silence and loneliness, stagnant…’

As he spoke, his accent seemed to fade and for the first time, Rose truly believed she was listening to the smooth, grave tones of the ancient being he truly was. The trappings and quirks of humanity seemed to fall away, and his voice moved with the rhythm of the universe.

‘…and in its yearning for some nameless force to fill it, it pulled together every fibre of the entropy within and with one shudder, created the Golden Mother. The first being of substance, she was everything that had never existed before: lightness, animate and full with sound and spirit, joy and love and trust…she was everywhere and everywhen, but still not immense enough to fill up the black. And so she danced among the desert of nothingness, and wherever her paws touched –’

‘Paws?’ Rose couldn’t help interrupting.

The Doctor smiled gently. ‘The Vekko are quadrupeds.’

‘Oh. Okay then,’ she managed, her throat feeling tight and dry as if she hadn’t used it in a while. Had time perhaps fallen away as he spoke?

She couldn’t analyze that because he was talking again.

‘Wherever they touched, configurations of energy burst forth. The rhythm of her dance created the turn of the cosmos, and with a shake of her mane she catapulted the light that illuminates it into the omnidirection. But she needed something for them to revolve around that was not her, and so she dug her paws into the void and tored it open, creating the center of things,’ he intoned gravely. ‘But the void was cold and sharp and cutting, and wounded her as she worked. From the errant droplets of her blood she created the planets and the stars, and taught them to dance in the cosmos with her. She gave these products of her injury names of power, and loved them more than any other of her creations, and into each she breathed a different kind of life. Even today the Vekko believe she is at the edge of the universe, bringing life to new planets and stars and moons.’

Rose shivered at the very idea, even as the Doctor went on.

‘Yet the Golden Mother also knows the ways of balance, and there are some of her creations that are sick…or have aged past their prime, and so in her mercy she helps them sleep and then uses their bones to build up new worlds – Rose? Are you alright?’

She blinked, and upon seeing the Doctor was staring down at her in concern, she realized there were tears coursing down her cheeks.

‘I’m fine,’ she told him, sniffing and quickly wiping away the trails of moisture.

He made an annoyed sound. ‘I knew you would be upset – dunno why I brought you here, your lot have this thing about anthropocentricity that just –’

‘I’m not upset!’ she hurried to blurt out, and when he gave her a look that said he didn’t believe her, she added, ‘I’m just…extremely happy. And…and…it’s like you said the other day, yeah?’ She nodded to the galaxy around them. ‘Seeing this? Makes me feel really small.’

Understanding passed over his face, and the smile was back. ‘Know what the cure to that is?’

‘Tell me,’ she grinned back.

‘Don’t look at it alone.’

And her hand was suddenly in his and he was looking at her with such unabashed joy for once and – 

For the first time since she met the Doctor (not counting that time in Cardiff where she thought she was she was about to be turned into a zombie and a lot of really mad thoughts had passed through her mind), she felt the conscious urge to kiss the Doctor.

As soon as the urge made itself known, it was replaced with shock and denial.

_He’s my best friend – he’s so much older – he’s alien – he doesn’t do relationships like_ that _–_

And wasn’t it just like her to ruin something good by having some kind of inappropriate longing?

_It’s just my hormones_ , she told herself firmly. _This place is gorgeous and I’m getting emotional over it, and my hormones are making me think impossible and stupid things._

She decided she wouldn’t let herself think like this again, no matter how many galaxy rooms the Doctor happened to have in his ship.

·ΘΣ·

Once Rose wandered off to call her mother or something trite like that, the Doctor found himself returning to the galaxy room on his own.

Standing amid the swirling constellations and endless dark matter, he found himself counting. Averaging out populations and existences in that one little galaxy – one of the smaller ones that he had visited – and then moving on to the insurmountable task of trying to quantify the amount of life in all the known galaxies.

He lost count of it somewhere in the septillions before realizing that it didn’t matter. Whatever it was, the percentage was much higher than the number of people who had died when he destroyed Gallifrey.

He swallowed, realizing he didn’t know what the exact number was.

Had never thought about it, really.

He’d always shied away from thinking about it, always distanced himself from the reality and made it an abstract: the Time Lords were gone, extinct. He had pressed the button, caused that to happen, without really knowing how many he was killing.

And that didn’t even take into the account the Daleks – twisted, tortured, evil souls that they were, they were still a living race that he had obliterated – or the rest of the planet. The flora and the fauna, the people living on Gallifrey who weren’t necessarily Time Lord or even native Gallifreyan.

How many of those war casualties had been children? Children whose deaths meant that the rest of this beautiful, terrible and utterly confounding universe was able to keep going?

Should he even bother counting? Was it any use to him now, after the fact? Shouldn’t he have thought about it before? Would it have changed anything?

The questions needled at him, a dizzying nausea with each new one, but before he could give in to the bitter temptation to enumerate the innocent souls whose deaths marred his psyche, there was a click from behind him.

The door suddenly opened and a pale figure slipped inside.

·ΘΣ·

Rose dreamed of howling wolves and woman on a barren beach, dressed in a Victorian looking dress and dancing across the grey sand.

She woke to the sound of the TARDIS humming all around her, and a strange sense of something calling out to her. It was a feeling like she had forgotten to do something, or forgotten something somewhere. Sort of like the vague sense of leaving the stove on, and having no other choice but to check it.

The need was pressing, and so half-asleep she found herself scrambling out from under her covers.

There was no time to waste.

She moved through the corridors, the floors cold on her bare feet, but she ignored that. Instead, she paused in front of each door she came across, instinctively knowing even as she looked at it that it wasn’t what she was looking for.

And then she was standing in front of one door, painted green, and she knew it was here that she was being called to.

Without hesitation or thought, she opened turned the handle and let herself through the doorway.

The room beyond it was empty, but for one item that sat centered on the floor.

A small box, full of gears on the inside and intricate patterns on the outside.

Curious, she reached out to examine it.

‘Don’t.’

She jumped, whirling around to find the Doctor leaning against the wall. She hadn’t even noticed him when she came through the door, he had blended in so well to the shadows. 

His eyes were once again piercing, fixed on her, but to her surprise he didn’t radiate wrath and rage the way he had when she tried on the Time Lord robes or woke him from his nightmare. In fact, he just looked so tired.

Tired and gutted.

‘What is it?’ she asked, her voice a whisper in the darkness and still muddled with the last traces of sleep that she was fighting.

He shook his head and gestured for him to follow him. She did so, filled with trepidation that suddenly she had gone too far, and that this was where he told her she had completely violated his privacy and was going home.

Instead, he merely closed the door behind her and looked down at her.

‘I don’t know how you found yourself here, but you shouldn’t have seen that,’ he told her quietly. ‘It’s something beyond the comprehension of your people…or mine.’ He placed his hand on the door. ‘If I were Bluebeard, this would be the room I wouldn’t’ve wanted you to ever see. But you’ve already seen it…and rather than take his approach to things, simply make me a promise: that you won’t go into that room ever again. Don’t go looking for it, don’t disturb what rests there.’ He paused. ‘Can you promise me that?’

‘Yes.’ She didn’t even think about it. The Doctor was telling her to do something in that tone of voice, and she knew that it was important. ‘Promise.’

He gazed at her more intently at that, and then nodded in satisfaction. He started to walk away, and Rose felt a sudden fear at being left behind by him in the wake of such a puzzling encounter.

‘Wait!’

He stopped walking, but didn’t turn around.

She struggled for a moment, having no idea what to follow up with, and so blurted out the first thing to come to her mind. ‘Who’s Bluebeard?’

Now he did turn around, his mouth twitching a bit.

‘Rose Tyler,’ he said, shaking his head. Then he held out a hand. ‘Come on, I’ll tell you the story.’

She hurried to catch up with him, and as he began to talk, she knew that the green door and the mysterious contents behind it was even now retreating to the depths of the TARDIS.

She doubted she would ever see it again.

·ΘΣ·

Even long after Rose went back to sleep, the Doctor lingered in her room. He had her permission this time – she wanted him to finish his story, which he did just as she was nodding off back into slumber – and stayed for another hour afterward just to keep an eye on her.

He secretly wanted to make sure that she wasn’t about to go off on another random jaunt in the middle of her sleep cycle. 

When it seemed she would remain asleep now until her version of morning, he quietly left the room and closed the door behind him. Quietly he asked the TARDIS to keep it locked until she woke up properly, and then chided her for letting Rose find the green door in the first place.

As he entered the console room, the ship was insisting that this time it wasn’t her doing.

Which made the Doctor wonder just how active the Moment might still be. It was the only logical explanation for how Rose had found that door, because he certainly hadn’t told her about it.

Had the weapon made itself known and reached out because he had been thinking about the War? If that were the case, why ignore him and call out to Rose?

He couldn’t come up with any clear answer to that, and he was still staring into space trying to figure it out when Rose came into the console room a few hours later, tea in hand and dressed to go out for the first time in days.

‘Just shut up and drink it,’ she told him before he could even open his mouth about food near the TARDIS again.

He sent her a mock severe look, but did as he was told.

‘So, where should we go today?’ Rose asked. ‘My feet are itching to do some running…or, even fast walking.’

‘Could do the 1920s,’ he suggested. ‘The music alone is worth a listen.’

‘Sounds good to me!’ Rose beamed, and then paused. She cocked her head to one side, studying the Time Rotor thoughtfully.

‘What’s that look for?’ he asked.

‘I was just thinking…is there anything we can do for the TARDIS? I mean, she took such good care of us the past few days.’

‘Already done it,’ he told her, puzzled at the sentiment while at the same time feeling his hearts warm at her conscientiousness. ‘Finished the maintenance a while ago.’

‘I know that – but isn’t there something that she enjoys or which is good for her?’

‘It’s a sentient ship, Rose, not a poodle.’ 

Rose let out an exasperated sigh, a sentiment which seemed to be echoed by the TARDIS, who apparently disliked the idea of being compared to a yappy canine.

‘New parts are always good,’ he allowed. ‘We can stop off at a bazaar somewhere and get her a few things that she’s missing. Was gonna do that the next time you were sleeping, but if you want to go along…’

‘Sure – we can stop in the Twenties later.’

‘If you insist – but really, Rose, she pretty much rules the roost around here – or haven’t you noticed? What else could she possibly need? And if she did need anything, she could just create it for herself.’

‘I guess,’ Rose acknowledged with a hesitant nod. ‘Fine then.’ Her expression cleared then, and without preamble she strode over to one of the coral struts and pressed a light kiss there. ‘Doubt you ever get a thank you, do you, girl? Himself isn’t exactly the type –’

He managed a strangled, ‘Oi!’

‘ – so this is me saying it: thank you.’

She turned to face the Doctor.

‘I’m going to go get ready, okay? Can I wear anything I want to this bazaar or do they have some weird dislike of the colour purple that ends us up arrested when we land?’

‘What you have on his fine,’ the Doctor managed to tell her, his mouth dry. 

‘You alright?’

‘I’m always alright,’ he deflected, returning his attention to the console. ‘We should stop somewhere and get some milk. Didn’t have my tea yet.’

‘Ooh, can we go somewhere retro where they still have milk in the bottles and all that?’ Rose enthused. ‘Oh, and we’ve got to get some groceries too. There might be a garden on here, but that doesn’t make the bread keep any longer than a week – and seeing as how there’s apparently a woolly mammoth on here that needs feeding…’

Rose’s voice trailed off as she left the console, and the Doctor watched the spot where she had been for a long while.

Laying his hand on the console, he stroked the surface somewhat reverently, and let a heartfelt wave of thanks radiate towards the TARDIS.

Not just for everything she had done for the past few days, but because it was the TARDIS who had brought him to Rose.


End file.
